Story by Ilyas Sholihyn
There was a time when lobsters were considered so shitty, there was a law against feeding them to prisoners.
This shell-shocking incongruity was true prior to the nineteenth century in North America, where these bottom feeders were once so plentiful they garnered the vile reputation of being the poor man's protein. So copious were these crustaceans on the shores that they were given as scrap food to prisoners, orphans and servants. Letting folks dig into them tender chunks of juicy flesh was considered so cruel that some parts of New England enacted laws that forbade serving lobsters to inmates more than a couple times a week.