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The New Mexico Department of Corrections feeds 6,500 men and women three times a day in its state-operated prisons, and rest assured, not all of them think Emeril Lagasse is the cook.

One inmate in particular, accused cop-killer Michael Paul Astorga, would like the department to kick it up a notch. He's complained to a judge that the food he gets at the Penitentiary of New Mexico lacks, shall we say, a yum factor. He claims his food in the Level 6 unit is perfect for weight loss and also is served on dirty and contaminated dishes that sometimes contain foreign substances, like hair.

Joe Williams, who runs the state Department of Corrections, isn't about to say the food inmates eat gets a 100 percent thumbs up from its tough-minded (and just plain tough) critics. But he rises to the defense of the kind of grub inmates eat — and the way his department works to make certain it's of high quality.

"If we've got a problem," Williams says, "inmates are going to let us know we've got a problem."

If you think food is a big deal for you, imagine Williams' world. He has thousands of customers, more or less, almost all of whom look at breakfast, lunch and dinner — the three squares a day — as a highlight in a day that has no real highlights.

The stakes, if not steaks, are high. Look at almost any prison problem, in almost any state, and a lack of good-quality food feeds the discontent. Bad food was deemed a factor in the 1980 riot at the state penitentiary, the nuclear bomb that basically destroyed a corrections system, left 33 inmates dead and caused New Mexico to spend millions in rebuilding and rethinking its rather medieval ideas on crime and punishment.

Williams, who joined the Corrections Department two years after the riot and has run the department since 2003, says he doesn't want to go back to the bad old days.

And Astorga's complaints notwithstanding, he says the department hasn't.

"I see corrections people (around the country) talk about green bologna and getting tough (on prisoners). Well, I don't go there," Williams says. "I believe in feeding them a good, fair, balanced meal. I believe inmates have a right to have us care, and we certainly care."

How? For one, Williams says the department mandates that its contractors - for the most part Aramark, a national food service company — make certain inmates get 3,400 calories per day. There also are provisions for foods many New Mexicans grew up with and like, including chile, plus eight "specialty" meals — all-out feedings for holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, even Super Bowl Sunday. That's when inmates get a sack lunch they like to call "the wanna-be Subway sandwich."

"My meal cost is $1.54 per tray, which I think is a fair representation," Williams says. "I could bring my cost down if I brought the calorie count down."

He says the wardens and other officials at New Mexico's state-run prisons must keep an eye on food quality — or the dislike of food — and not just as an antidote to unrest. It's a cost issue as well.

"If I'm a warden, and I see trays coming back with food on them, I'm wasting money," Williams notes.

None of this, of course, is likely to mollify Astorga and other inmates who've had problems with food and other accommodations provided by the state prison system. Williams says he knows such complaints come with the territory.

"We're not beating anybody at 10 and 2; we feed people three squares a day," he says. "But they (inmates at Level 6) are there for reasons. That's where the most violent and dangerous people are."