Convicted Pedophile Sues Florida Prison System For Making Him Eat Soy, Says It's 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment'

Convicted Pedophile Sues Florida Prison System For Making Him Eat Soy, Says It's "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"

By Kyle Munzenrieder Tue., Nov. 8 2011 at 4:23 PM

Eric Harris does not "lovetofu" (unless you're a small child, but that's a different story).

â€‹In order to keep food costs down, the Florida prison system routinely substitutes about half of the meat product in inmates' meals with soy. But one inmate, Eric Harris, currently serving a life sentence for committing sexual battery on a young child, is suing the state, claiming that forcing him to eat soy constitutes "cruel and unusual" punishment.

Florida prisons began using soy in most of their meals in 2009. Inmates are served meals that are about 50 percent actual meat and 50 percent soy. Without the soy substitute, the cost to taxpayers could double.

Now, The Orlando Sentinel reports that Harris has filed a lawsuit with the assistance of an anti-soy group.

"These men are guinea pigs who are being fed high levels of soy," Kimberly Hartke, a spokeswoman for the Weston A. Price Foundation, tells the Sentinel.

Harris claims that the soy leads to painful intestinal cramping and could damage his thyroid and immune system. Though there's been some controversy about soy, (including one guy who apparently thinks it makes boys gay) most nutritionists see nothing wrong with eating the protein-supplement. Florida prisons also do offer non-soy-based meals to inmates, which usually include peanut butter or beans.

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Jeffery Dilegge

This article is making me stupid.

journo-nazi

"Without the soy substitute, the cost to taxpayers could double" ...

Errrn ... "return their previous level, which has been halved" - but that's probably not inflammatory enough.

Journalism? O tempora! O mores!

hippieland

Complaining about having to eat tofu? He should try Nutra-loaf.He'd gladly eat the tofu.

COBRA CHOPPERGIRL

In prison you are starved for protein. Literally starved. So much so its hard to concentrate, especially with the constant noise assaulting your brain. Cutting the meat in half with soy substittutes is literally a lock and stock sure fire death sentence for the mind. If you're an innocent man convicted on trumped up sexual charges like most are, try writing a legal appeal surrounded by constant noise, stress, and violence.... then compound that with a starvation diet... and you're in some kind of bizarre macabre warped surreal nightmarish hell.

Just because someone is convicted of a crime, even a sexual crime, does not mean they did it. In America its painfully easy to convict anyone of such a thing based on nothing more than accusations, because American's are so gung ho insane to hang anyone even accused of such a thing. All it takes is an accusation, similiar to a denunciation of a witch like in old times, to send some one in America away for 20 years.

I went to traffic court recently and watched time and time again, innocent people who had hurt no one, plead guilty over and over for fear of the state, and that they just wanted it 'over'. There was no victim, and no crime. Most of the cases were for lack of tag, insurance, or simple speeding with no wreck involved. In my case I was there with a friend, who simply went off the road and hit a tree and totalled her car. The American court system is a scam and a rip off, designed to scare the shit out of people and intimidate them to internalizing their fear. It process people through this slaughterhouse of courts and prisons for profit, and we all lose.