On last meals

I was thinking early this afternoon about last meals, and I had two distinct and unrelated thoughts. First, it seems a curious luxury for our execution-happy system to offer the condemned.

And second is this: I wouldn't even be able to eat a last meal. When I am in the throes of anxiety, as I surely would be if I were facing imminent execution, I cannot eat. (See The Last Year, 65 pounds lost in). The double chocolate layer cake I would order would surely go to waste, in what can only be termed a bitter irony.

And so I wonder. How many condemned can actually even eat their last meals.