Coss Marte strides through the streets of New York’s Lower East Side with total confidence. “I used to sell drugs on this corner,” he says breezily as we walk across the street to a grocery store. He grabs items off the shelves. Doritos, instant noodles - the processed food favourites he used to rely on in prison. He pauses, staring at the packs of noodles. “This really is survival food in prison.” Michael Gibson-Light has heard this many times before. He stumbled across the importance of instant noodles when he was researching prison jobs. His resulting research on instant noodles made headlines when it emerged last year. He’s the one who declared something that US prisoners have known for ages - in the past few years, instant noodles have come to replace cigarettes as the most traded item in US prisons. “It was totally taken for granted by the prisoner population,” he says. “I was surprised since all you ever really see on TV and movies, or read about in research about prisons is that cigarettes are the de facto currency.” That’s notable because it’s such a huge population. The US has more known prisoners than any other country in the world 2.2 million at the last count. And the change - from cigarettes to instant noodles - boils down to money. Prison budgets have been slashed and most prisons feed inmates the minimum number of calories per day. Many offer just two meals a day on weekends. Prison food has been the subject of recent state Supreme Court lawsuits, with prisoners arguing that prison food is inedible. “So, the food is even worse and there’s less of it,” Gibson-Light explains. “If you’re in prison and you want or need more food than you can get from the chow line, then you have to buy it yourself. The costs of nutrition have shifted to the prisoners themselves. Instant noodles are a go-to because they're cheap.” But it goes further. Noodles function as currency. Over time, they became so valuable that people started using them to trade with. It didn't take long for them to essentially replace tobacco products as the new black market currency, explains former prisoner Chandra Bozelko. “They’re easily stored and they’re non-perishable, so they can be kept for a very long time,” she says.

Noodles have replaced cigarettes as the most traded item in US prisons

Chandra served six years in prison in Connecticut for identity theft. The press called her the “Connecticut Princess” - an Ivy League graduate who was convicted of stealing credit card information and forging signatures to buy thousands of dollars worth of goods online. Now she’s out, and part of her case is on appeal, she writes about prison life, including why instant noodles are so valuable on the inside. “You might have a certain book from the outside that I want to read. You might say, ‘I’ll give you 10 soups - 10 packages of ramen noodles - in exchange for that book,’ or to even borrow that book. I’m sure it’s been used for payment for sexual acts.” Noodles can ease social interactions inside a prison, Chandra says. “It can be used as a gratuity. So a lot of times there’s a laundry worker who washes people’s clothes, and even though you’re not required to do that, they might hand over a package of noodles when the laundry worker gives an inmate back her clothes, when they’re folded and dried.”

Coss Marte preparing a 'prison burrito'

It’s the same story for the men. Coss Marte says things can get violent when instant noodle debts aren’t repaid. “There are all types of hustling inside the system. People juggle. Juggle means you get, like, a 200% mark-up. If you give someone two ramen noodle soups, you get four [more] ramen noodle soups back within a week. “I've seen people get cut and stabbed for ramen noodle. And it’s not about the 30 cents it’s worth. It’s about the principle. It’s currency in the system.” Edible currency, that is. Chandra says she’ll never eat instant noodles again, but for Coss Marte, it’s a different story.

He serves up his prison burrito and I give it a try. Warm and starchy, it’s full of flavour. Synthetic flavour - fake cheese and ketchup, mostly - but it’s easy to see why this would pass as comfort food inside a prison. In fact, prisoners turn noodles into all sorts of things, from tortillas to pizza bases. “I’ll make this once a year,” he explains, after eating a forkful of the burrito. “Maybe I’m watching a prison show or something and it’s like, ugh, memories.” Burritos are mostly off the menu because Coss is in shape now. He’s come a long way from prison, and runs his own gym. “I was eating all this junk food every day,” he says, gesturing towards the instant noodles. “The doctors told me my cholesterol levels were so bad I could die of a heart attack in five years. I was sentenced to seven years. That motivated me.” On his self-assigned exercise regime, he lost 70lb in just a few months. He didn’t want to die in prison, he explains.

Coss Marte runs a prison-themed workout gym