the diet isn’t 100% vegan. The students are served meat 4x a week. They are also allowed to order out food for passing certain behavioral contracts.

That’s good to know, and sorry if I wasn’t clear in the post. I didn’t mean to imply that the ‘foods to avoid’ are excluded completely from students diets – I don’t have that information. The point I was making is that this is a rather odd list of foods to avoid, and the reasons given for doing so are often very unconvincing.

I’d also have concerns about casting certain foods as ‘bad’ for no good reason. I don’t see this as likely to help to build a ‘healthy’ attitude to food.

“The JRC, though, can hold and discipline students against their will.”
This statement is misleading as well. First of all, every place like JRC holds students “against their will”. Many other places shove lots of pills down their throats “against their will”.

I certainly appreciate that there are concerns about forced medication etc. However, this blog focuses on nutrition, so that was what I concentrated on in the blog post.

The point I was trying to make is that there are additional concerns if places like JRC impose a particular diet on residents as opposed to – for example – people choosing to follow a vegan diet for ethical reasons.

The last thing that I take issue with is the use of Linda Cornelison as an obvious defense of your argument against the diet.
Linda was a student there many many years before I worked there and therefore many many years before the vegan diet was in place. Linda died in 1990, this diet was introduced in 2004.

Sorry if this was not clear, but I just don’t think the post used Linda’s death in this way. This is a footnote, included at the very end of the post – it’s not integral to my argument against the diet. I would, however, emphasise that inadequate diet can be extremely dangerous: while dietary changes are often seen as a safe alternative to medication, this is not necessarily the case.

The concern remains that JRC appears to be imposing dietary limitations on students, and the reasons given for this are often unconvincing.

“The JRC, though, can hold and discipline students against their will.”

This statement is misleading as well. First of all, every place like JRC holds students “against their will”. Many other places shove lots of pills down their throats “against their will”.
The students at JRC are either minors who have been placed there by their parents, or adults who have been deemed incompetent. Many of the JRC students have been kicked out of other placements that were holding them “against their will”.

The last thing that I take issue with is the use of Linda Cornelison as an obvious defense of your argument against the diet.
Linda was a student there many many years before I worked there and therefore many many years before the vegan diet was in place. Linda died in 1990, this diet was introduced in 2004.