[jsmthrowaway]

Someone's been watching too much Hollywood. That's not how food inside works. Your meal is selected for you and given to you in a container, depending on facility. Some prisons have a system similar to what you describe, but inmates' hands are not on the serving equipment and you're only saying "yes"/"no" to things. The facility has strict counts of calories to maintain and putting a serving spoon in the hand of an inmate is a good way to throw a budget away.

In almost all cases in county, the food is already prepared in a plastic container and if you refuse what is offered to you, you do not eat, which means even kosher folks go without for a couple days until the records "catch up."

[bdcravens]

Not true in Texas, one of the large prison systems in the world.