Nobody thinks prison food is haute cuisine, but could it be so bad it’s unconstitutional? The question comes up more often than you might think, and there’s one dish in particular that so offends the palates of America’s prisoners that it’s repeatedly been the subject of lawsuits: Nutraloaf.

Nutraloaf (sometimes called Nutri-loaf, sometimes just “the loaf”) is served in state prisons around the country. It’s not part of the regular menu but is prescribed for inmates who have misbehaved in various ways—usually by proving untrustworthy with their utensils. The loaf provides a full day’s nutrients, and it’s finger food—no fork necessary.

Prisoners sue over Nutraloaf with some regularity, usually arguing either that their due process rights have been violated (because they are served the punitive loaves without a hearing) or that the dish is so disgusting as to make it cruel and unusual and thus a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Typical of these suits is the 1992 case LeMaire v. Maass. Samuel LeMaire slit a man’s throat before going to state prison and attacked his prison guards and fellow prisoners with sharpened poles, feces, and a homemade knife once inside. LeMaire was then put in a Nutraloaf-serving disciplinary unit. Among other complaints about the accommodations there, LeMaire argued that Nutraloaf was cruel and unusual and thus violated his 8th Amendment rights.

A lower court agreed with LeMaire and ordered the prison to serve him something more delicious. The 9th Circuit, however, overturned the lower court’s decision, holding that while Nutraloaf may be unappetizing, “The Eighth Amendment requires only that prisoners receive food that is adequate to maintain health; it need not be tasty or aesthetically pleasing.”

Prisoners in Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and West Virginia, among other states, have sued over Nutraloaf or its equivalent. The latest court to hear a Nutraloaf case is the Vermont Supreme Court, where prisoners argued that Vermont’s use of the loaf violated their due process rights. (In Vermont, the punishment is one loaf, served at normal meal times, for up to a week.) Oral arguments (MP3) were heard in March, and a decision is expected to come down by the end of the year. But it doesn’t look good for the prisoners. The lawyer representing the prisoners noted that “Nutraloaf has been found to be uniformly unappetizing to everyone who has been served it.” To which one justice replied: “Counsel, I’ve eaten Nutraloaf. And it isn’t tasty. But many things I’ve eaten aren’t tasty.”

Even unsympathetic courts seem willing to concede that Nutraloaf is pretty disgusting, but after reading through the court filings in these cases, I couldn’t shake a nagging question—just how bad is it? Nutraloaf is made differently in different prisons. Vermont’s penal cookbook calls for a combination of vegetables, beans, bread, cheese, and raisins. I recently spent $15 on a nearly identical dish at a vegan cafe in New York—and it didn’t even have raisins. In a spirit of legal and culinary adventurousness, I decided to make some Nutraloaf of my own.

I chose three test recipes that seemed representative of the various loaves served in prisons across the land: a vegan Nutraloaf from Illinois that is heavy on processed ingredients (and has been the subject of lawsuits); a meat recipe from California that favors fresh, natural ingredients (which has not been challenged in court); and the Nutraloaf from Vermont, the one most recently at issue before a court.

I started with Illinois. I mixed canned spinach in with baked beans, tomato paste, margarine, applesauce, bread crumbs, and garlic powder. Together the ingredients became a thick, odorous, brown paste, which I spread into a loaf pan and put in the oven. After 40 minutes, I took the loaf out of the oven and sliced some off. It was dense and dry and tasted like falafel gone wrong. But instead of it making me feel pleasantly sated like falafel does, even the small test slice I sampled gave me a stomachache.

I cooked up Vermont next, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Vermont was like Illinois but with raisins and nondairy cheese. I’m a vegetarian, so my sister-in-law Lori volunteered to cook the California loaf, which includes ground beef. As she mixed up the chopped cabbage, diced carrots, cubed potatoes, whole wheat flour, and beans, I realized that what she was making looked delicious, at least compared with the first two loaves. Lori kindly offered to make two California loaves—one with meat and one without, our only deviation from the Nutraloaf recipes.

To test the loaves, I invited friends and relatives over for what I promised would be an educational dinner party. This being Washington, D.C., more than half the adults were lawyers, which I thought gave our experiment a nice jurisprudential twist. To keep the Nutraloaf test authentic, I mandated that my guests eat with their hands; plus, after sneaking in that taste of Illinois earlier in the day, I was worried someone might stab me if I let them use utensils.

I thought I’d start out easy with the loaf that hasn’t inspired a lawsuit—yet. California looked nice on the plate, though it didn’t quite hold together as a loaf. I picked some off my plate with my fingers. It tasted a bit like vegetarian chili. Not bad. My cousin Steve, a mortgage broker who had sampled the California loaf with meat, disagreed. “It’s what you imagine Alpo tastes like,” he said. Lori said she liked it and said she’d even consider making it again, though she’d use more spices. Lee, a lawyer and her husband, asked her not to.

Next came Illinois. I couldn’t bear to try another piece; the others were divided about whether it was cruel or merely unusual. Lee described Illinois as “absolutely detestable.” David, a lawyer, liked it and willingly ate a second piece. Steve summed up Illinois generously: “I think if you like baked beans, you like Illinois. I like baked beans. I wouldn’t think it’s fair to sue anyone over it.”

Last came Vermont. It looked the best of the three—it was moist—and the nondairy cheese and canned carrots gave it a fetching orange color. But it tasted terrible. Mike, a computer guy at NASA, said the raisins were disconcerting; you couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be in there or not. Steve said he hated it, but it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever eaten. I asked him what was the worst thing he’d ever eaten. “Cat,” he said. “But I didn’t know it was cat.” David, meanwhile, helped himself to another slice of Illinois, a decision he later came to regret. “The third slice sits a little heavy,” he said.

As the night went on, and wine washed away the taste of loaves, we discussed the Eighth Amendment and how bad food would actually have to be in order to be unconstitutional. Kim, a lawyer who works in asylum law and knows a human rights violation when she sees one, said the loaves would have to be extremely bad—considerably worse than any of the food we’d just eaten. Courts have nearly all found that prison food can be unappetizing, cold, and even contain foreign objects, and still not be unconstitutional.

Inmates hoping for relief from the courts for their Nutraloaf punishments aren’t likely to get it from the courts. They won’t likely get it from the prison cooks, either. When the Vermont prison’s lawyer was asked during oral arguments why Nutraloaf couldn’t be made more appetizing, he answered that if it were tastier, then prisoners would act up for the privilege of getting Nutraloaf. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the rest of the prison menu.