Nutrition lessons from death row? an analysis of last meals

Extreme events can provide windows into food preferences that might otherwise be latent. In this paper, we analyze the “last meals” that prisoners facing capital punishment requested in advance of their executions. We focus on a sample (n = 272) of individuals who were executed in the United States in 2002 through 2006 and hypothesize that comfort foods (e.g., meats and fried foods; Wansink et al., 2003) will dominate “last meal” selections. We find a robust pattern for prisoners to request high‐fat foods even though they know that their shadow of the future is very short. On average, they ate 2.18 items of meats and fried foods for their last meals in contrast to 1.02 items of starches, fruits, and vegetables, F = 20.34, p < .001. This result was consistent across regions of the United States as well as whether or not they expressed remorse prior to execution. We also test for differences between a subset (n = 25) of prisoners who were executed during this period who have been posthumously exonerated of their convictions and the rest of the population (n = 247). Our findings relate to popular writing by chefs about their “last meal” preferences as well as research concerning the role of comfort foods. More generally, our findings have relevance for understanding the impact that steep discounting of the future can have upon childhood and adult obesity rates.