"Discipline loaf," or "Nutraloaf," is a dense, disgusting brick of baked-together foods that don't normally go together -- like ground beef and applesauce, or oatmeal, vegetable skins and beans -- used to punish prisoners in solitary confinement in many states. As of today (Dec. 17), New York is no longer one of them.

Solitary confinement is notoriously awful -- and human rights advocacy groups have long posited that many aspects of solitary constitute cruel and unusual punishment. One of these elements is the dreaded disciplinary loaf.

David C. Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, told the New York Times that “Food is very important to prisoners in a deprived and harsh environment; it is one of the very few things they have to look forward to. And when you mess with prisoners’ food that leads to unhappy prisoners, which leads to management problems.”

Karen Murtagh, the director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, reiterated that eliminating the loaf is a human rights win.

Murtagh told the New York Times that despite the fact that it contains all legally-mandated nutrition for prisoners, the loaf is “a disgusting, torturous form of punishment that should have been banned a century ago," and added that "Most people are appalled at using food as punishment," and that most people believe "such behavior went out with the stocks, whips and shackling to the wall.”

The same report notes that people who've tried the loaf often compare the taste to "carboard, packing material and other inedible offerings," and that for prisoners in solitary, "refusing to obey orders from corrections officers during mealtime could also result in loaf lunches (and breakfasts and dinners, too) for up to 14 days."

One prisoner told the Times, “I would taste it and just throw it away. You’d rather be without food than eat that.”

Ditching the loaf is just one of a number of widely-praised reforms being made to New York's solitary confinement rules -- including limiting the amount of time prisoners can be held in the tiny cells of solitary and improving the living conditions inside of them. But, according to a report from the New York Times, "experts say no change may have a more immediate impact on prisoners’ moods and on those of the officers assigned to keep them behind bars, than the end of the so-called disciplinary-sanctioned restricted diet."