Rule 20 of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners requires: (1) Every prisoner shall be provided by the administration at the usual hours with food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength, of wholesome quality and well prepared and served. (2) Drinking water shall be available to every prisoner whenever he needs it. Furthermore, rule 26 of the Standard Minimum Rules requires: (1) The medical officer shall regularly inspect and advise the director upon: (a) The quantity, quality, preparation and service of food; IMPLICATIONS In countries where the quality of food available to many law-abiding members of the community is inadequate, the question may be asked why prisoners should be guaranteed adequate food. The answer is rooted in a respect for the right to adequate food. If the State has taken from prisoners the opportunity to provide for their own basic needs, these must be supplied by the State. The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the right to food has stressed the inclusion of the right to adequate drinking water as part of the definition of the right to adequate food. In his report to the Commission at its fifty-eighth session, in 2002, the Special Rapporteur wrote: drinking water is essential for healthy nutrition, so that it should be considered a public good. Both the quality and the quantity of water available are fundamental. Setting standards for water quality is extremely important, as is ensuring equitable access to water resources to protect social justice. Including drinking water in the right to food is an important way of ensuring such accountability and justiciability. [E/CN.4/2002/58, para. 130] It should be noted that modern legal opinion holds that reduction of diet equates with corporal punishment and constitutes inhuman punishment. PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS ■ In many prisons there is land either inside the prison perimeter or immediately adjacent to the prison which can be used for cultivation. Wherever possible, prisoners should be encouraged to grow their own food. Any excess can be given or sold to the local community, where appropriate. ■ The issue of allowing or encouraging families of prisoners to supply food is a complicated one. On the one hand, the local culture may be such that families may wish or may be expected to supply food. In some places this arrangement also applies, for example, to patients in hospital. On the other hand, families themselves may be short of food. They may live a long distance away and may be unable to bring food to prisoners on a regular basis. 54