Fort Knox, Ky. – Following an annual survey on the nutrition environmental assessment tool (MNEAT), Fort Knox nutrition officials began to work with stakeholders and installation suppliers for Develop action plans focused on maintaining and improving the nutritional environment at the position.
“One of the things on which the installation is continuously working is to try to improve the nutritional environment on Fort Knox,” said Laura Bottoms, dietician of Ireland Army Health Clinic. “We have a working group – the working group on the nutritional environment as part of the working group on physical resilience for the Ready and Resilience Council (CR2C) commands – which worked with the different stakeholders to see how We can, as a team, improve the accessibility and availability of options better for you throughout the installation. »»
According to funds, food sellers through installation have made efforts to help put healthy food choices at the forefront, which has earned various improvements in the MNEAT score through the Nutritional Fort Knox imprint , including money recognition for Cantgny and Kouma catering facilities. Given that owners of chain restaurants in post have no control over the menus led by the company at their locations, they rather provide alternative menus or use new advertising techniques to highlight their healthier menu options .
“I was really proud of creative ways, some of our fast food suppliers, focused on what was under their control,” said Bottoms. “For example, stressing that their sandwiches could be transformed into salads at no additional cost.”
In addition to the efforts in traditional restaurants, Bottoms said that there had been efforts to provide more nutritional snack options around the installation. Fitpick options have been added to automatic distributors located in the US army recruitment command, recruitment and retention of college and its barracks, human resources command facilities and the army health clinic Ireland as part of this initiative.
Fitpick Vending is a machine labeling program that aims to make nutritional items easily discernible from unhealthy snacks using a system of stickers. This system provides nutritional facts via a sticker outside the machines and draws attention to these healthier items with a simply labeled sticker “Fitpick”.
According to the National Association of Automatic MooringFitpick sales options must join the following nutritional needs by package 20 grams of sugar.
“Not only does this initiative help increase the availability of healthy items in machines on the job, but it is also easier for the consumer to identify what these items are because they cannot return the label and watch it “Said Bottoms. “And for those of us who need a snack in the middle of the working day, but who have nothing and do not need to go to an automatic distributor, at least now we have a better choice.”
Bottoms said that the working group and the seller had been able to work together to find products that would probably be pleasant for consumers, while meeting all the Fitpick criteria.
“(The seller) is not contracted to do so and it is not required to have a number of healthy options in their machines,” said Bottoms. “It is literally this seller who says:” Okay, I’m going to get involved to try to improve the installation “, so we are really delighted that they took this jump.”
Thanks to these continuous collective efforts, the score of Fort Knox Mneat has improved by 24% since 2020, which obtained the installation of a bronze recognition last year.
Visit Fort Knox News has www.army.mil/knox For all the latest news and military information from the Kentucky Central.