Sounds better than pruno.

I love the term "Disciplinary Loaf"... it's a little forboding, a little disturbing, yet indirectly oxymoronic...

Many California jails, including those in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties, have gone so far as to serve vegan dishes to please their socially conscious inmates.

Vegan dishes? Damn. That's pretty generous.

All I know about prison food is that many inmates at Rikers Island claim to be Jewish so that they can get the kosher food option. This isn't a jailhouse spiritual awakening. It's a pragmatic decision rooted in the fact that the kosher meals are prepared by an outside agency and not by nasty inmate-cooks spitting in the food.

If I had to guess, I'd imagine that providing a vegan option will cover most if not all religious dietary restrictions.

And disciplinary loaf? Maybe that's something to keep in mind for the next monkey/bachelor chow AskMe question.

A little more about prison food. Two excerpts from Jeffrey Henderson who went from crack dealer to top chef. Cool book.

I have a friend (who is friends with mischief, also) who spent a year and a half in one of our local jails. Apparently the local term for the delicacy is "nutri-loaf," and the friend claims it was made up of whatever would have been that day's meal, pureed in a blender and then baked.

Georgia must lack the "whole set of regulations requir[ing] meals not only be nourishing but also look good on the plate, too," because it sounds like the only way I'd eat some of the meals my friend described would have been in the baked-paste form.

One Bay Area county, so desperate to get one of its prisoners to eat, broke down and bought him a Big Mac.

Well all right then, sign me up.