FORT KNOX, Ky. — Following an annual Military Nutrition Environment Assessment Tool (mNEAT) survey, Fort Knox nutrition officials began working with installation stakeholders and vendors to develop action plans geared toward maintaining and improving the nutrition environment on post.
“One of the things the installation is continually working on is to try and improve the nutrition environment on Fort Knox,” said Laura Bottoms, Ireland Army Health Clinic Dietician. “We have a working group – the Nutrition Environment Working Group under the Physical Resilience Working Group for the Commanders Ready and Resilience Council [CR2C] – that has been working with the different stakeholders to see how we can, as a team, improve the accessibility and availability of better-for-you options throughout the installation.”
According to Bottoms, food vendors across the installation made efforts to help put healthy food choices in the forefront, which earned various mNEAT score improvements across Fort Knox’s nutrition footprint, including a silver recognition for Cantigny and Kouma dining facilities. Since chain restaurant owners on post have no control over the corporate-directed menus at their locations, they are instead providing alternative menus, or are utilizing new advertising techniques to highlight their healthier menu options.
“I was really proud of the creative ways some of our fast-food vendors focused on what was in their control,” said Bottoms. “For example, highlighting that their sandwiches could be made into salads at no additional cost.”
In addition to efforts at traditional restaurants, Bottoms said there have been efforts to provide more nutritional snack options around the installation. FitPick options were added to vending machines located at U.S. Army Recruiting Command, the Recruitment and Retention College and its barracks, Human Resources Command facilities and Ireland Army Health Clinic as part of this initiative.
FitPick vending is a vending machine labeling program that aims to make nutritional items easily discernable from unhealthy snacks by utilizing a point-of-sale sticker system. This system provides nutrition facts via a sticker on the outside of the machines and draws attention to these healthier items with a sticker simply labeled “FitPick”.
According to the National Automatic Merchandising Association, FitPick vending options must adhere to the following nutritional requirements per package: less than 250 total calories, less than 10 grams of fat, less than three grams of saturated fat, zero grams of trans fat, less than 230 milligrams of sodium and less than 20 grams of sugar.
“Not only does this initiative help increase the availability of healthy items in machines on post, but it also makes it easier for the consumer to identify what those items are since they can't flip the label over and look at it,” said Bottoms. “And for those of us that need a snack in the middle of the workday, but don't have anything and need to go to a vending machine, at least now we have a better choice.”
Bottoms said that the working group and vendor were able to work together to find products that would likely be enjoyable for consumers, while also meeting all the FitPick criteria.
“[The vender] is not contracted to do this and they’re not required to have a certain number of healthy options in their machines,” said Bottoms. “This is literally this vendor saying, ‘okay, I'm going to commit to try to make the installation better,’ so we're really excited that they took that leap.”
Through these continuous collective efforts, the Fort Knox mNEAT score has improved 24% since 2020, earning the installation a bronze recognition this past year.
Visit Fort Knox News at www.army.mil/knox for all of Central Kentucky's latest military news and information.
| Date Taken: | 01.28.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 01.28.2025 16:29 |
| Story ID: | 489741 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 21 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Installation nutrition working group strives to improve healthy offerings on post, by Savannah Baird, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
