Eating healthy at the chow hall?

Eating healthy at the chow hall? Isn’t that an oxymoron?? Depending on how much self control you can muster. There are healthier options. Like Tony says, always choose the best option available. The Air Force is offering a simple stoplight system to simplify our nutritional thinking process. Whether or not this is the best way to go about it, at least something is being done about our healthy eating choices at dining facilities.

When you see the red, yellow and green light signs above the foods at the chow hall serving line, they are part of the Go for Green Program. This Air Force wide nutrition program helps Airmen make healthy meal choices. The menu items are labeled green (eat often), yellow (eat occasionally), and red (eat rarely) based on the impact the food can have on an Airman's performance.

First Lady Michelle Obama herself has called notice to the lack of nutritional and healthy choices that we are given when she visited the chow hall at Little Rock AFB. She explained that it’s not just a matter of our svelte profiles. This is an issue of national budget and national security. DoD spends over $1.1 billion on medical bills related to excess weight and obesity a year. About a quarter of first-termers are too overweight to make through their first enlistment, according to the Pentagon. After this visit, she called for an upgrade to our menus.

This upgrade to our menus will be first program to improve nutritional standards in chow halls in over 20 years. 20 years?! WTF took so long?

Still don’t wanna commit yourself to eating healthy? If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for your kids (or future ones). This is the first generation that will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents because of the 'American diet'. A good diet can reverse diseases and conditions, and so as follows, a poor one will fuel them. Making healthy habits for yourself will transfer to your kids. There is such a thing as 'second-hand obesity.' Google it.

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/09/ST2008050900425.html

- http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/02/ap-first-lady-military-bases-need-healthier-foods-020912/

- http://www.jble.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123294544