(Marine Corps Times) Backtalk: Lack of support

[unhappycamper]

Lack of support
By Mark Detrick

The Corps is cracking down on Marines who let their weight slide out of control, but it’s not doing enough to provide us with the proper nutrition that will help keep the pounds from piling up.

Walk into any post exchange and what do you see? Twinkies, potato chips, cookies, frozen hamburgers and burritos. It’s a similar story at chow halls, where the healthiest food is found at the salad bar, and at the host of fast-food joints around most bases.

If Marines were given appropriate nutritional education and healthier options, everyone would stand a better chance at meeting the service’s strict new weight guidelines, which say Marines are not in standard when their body fat exceeds 18 percent for men and 26 percent for women. Obviously, a basic guideline for maintaining a healthy body weight is to eat a variety of healthy foods — those low in fat, saturated fat and cholesterol — yet such fare can be painfully difficult to find on base.

Chow halls at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for example, are run off a strictly regimented menu maintained by a retired lieutenant colonel. It tells the chow halls what they have to cook each day and how to cook it — down to the amount of salt. Most chow halls on base have a main line that serves two entrees, a starch and a vegetable, and a fast-food line that serves mostly hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, french fries and onion rings.

The chow halls are trying to serve healthier fare by using more precooked foods and sauces along with zero-trans fat oils, but the food is still fattening. Sante Fe glazed chicken: 435 calories, 20.3 grams of fat. Barbecue pork spare ribs: 597 calories, 40.5 grams of fat. And that’s just one meal out of three in a day.


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/community/opinion/marine_backtalk_chow_110308/%2e

[Recursion]

1. Once upon a time, the Corps did its own food

There were two relevant MOS's, 3361 and 3381. Every single thing you ate in a chow hall was defined by a recipe quantification. All produce was bought from local farmers. It wasn't great, but it was fresh and healthy.

Halliburton does the food for the Corps now. People in the two MOS's above had to switch jobs or end their careers. The food is a lot less healthy. Produce is shipped in from God knows where.