I'm sure that nobody will be interested in this unless you were in the Army at some point. I find it a little interesting to see that the dining facilities are said to be unreliable with hours and food quality. While the food may not have been 'fine dining', I never really had any complaints and never really had a meal there that I didn't like. The opposite, actually. I liked the food.

The dining facilities when I was in, had two sides. One side for 'fast food' items, like burgers or grilled cheese and things like that. The other side was for more of a sit down meal like roast beef, meatloaf, pot roast or whatever. You pick the side you want to eat at. Often times I'd go in both sides. Fast food for 'right now' and full meal (to go), for later in my room. Of course you weren't really supposed to do that, but everyone did lol. 

One Thanksgiving, I went to both sides, sat down for Thanksgiving dinner on one side, and then got carry out on the other side. Then I went about a mile down the road and hit both sides there for 2 more carry outs. That was lunch. Did the same thing at dinner time. lol That was "Bounty Bowl" day in 1989 when the Eagles beat the Cowboys 27-0 and I was at Fort Hood in Texas. A great Thanksgiving day!

 

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Army Pumping Millions into Food Kiosks, But They May Soon Be Obsolete

Christine Wormuth, secretary of the Army, speaks with Sgt. Maj. Kresassidy McKinney, III Armored Corps chief culinary management sergeant major, about the options available at the Culinary Outpost Food Kiosk, Fort Cavazos, Texas, Jan. 31, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Samantha Harms)

Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Published May 08, 2024 at 3:46pm ET

The Army is spending at least $4 million to expand its so-called food kiosks on bases this year. But that new method of feeding soldiers does not have to follow the service's own nutrition rules and may quickly be out of date as Army officials eye allowing meal cards to be used at commissaries.

Kiosks are effectively small snack stands providing soldiers with sandwiches, candy, chips and soda -- offerings that hold little nutritional value and a selection akin to what's found at a typical gas station. By this time next year, most major installations will have at least one kiosk, with many high-profile bases having several. Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is set to have four of them.

The kiosks are broadly considered by key Army staff to be a piecemeal solution to an issue senior leaders have struggled to solve: Soldiers are not using dining facilities in numbers that warrant further investment. That's due to a variety of factors, according to troops, including poor walkability and public transportation on bases, dining facility food being low quality, and unreliable schedules keeping soldiers guessing when those facilities are open.

Read Next: Gordon and Aleksandra: Videos, Photos Show Relationship Between Detained Soldier and Russian Woman

But the kiosks so far appear to be far from a perfect solution.

"They brief well on paper, but the execution has not been great," Rob Evans, who runs the Hots&Cots app, a Yelp-style social media platform allowing troops to post reviews of dining facilities and barracks, told Military.com.

A main complaint soldiers have reported with kiosks is the poor quality of food and nutrition at many installations. In most cases, kiosks are stocked with food from the commissary. Due to a complicated web of bureaucracy, troops cannot use their meal cards directly at the on-base grocery stores.

"We need more options than Cheetos and Mountain Dew," one junior enlisted soldier told Military.com on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press. "It's all snack food. It's fine once in a while. But you can't live off this stuff."

A review of the menus at several kiosks found that most items were high in sugar and low in protein and other critical nutrients, running afoul of the service's own standards. For example, male soldiers should get about 136 grams of protein each day, on average, though that guideline varies slightly based on body weight.

Getting the appropriate amount of protein can be difficult in kiosks -- at least without consuming roughly 100 grams of sugar along with it. Much of the food contains high levels of sugar. The American Heart Association recommends men have no more than 36 grams of added sugar per day.

In other cases, the food is usually pre-packaged and heavily processed. Soldiers have also reported issues with small portions, or being limited on what combinations of food they can select. Some installations have also struggled to keep shelves stocked.

The Army's regulation on nutrition, known as AR 40-25, is lagging behind the newly rolled out food stalls. The regulation has not been updated since 2017, a year before the first kiosks opened. Army staff have suggested that, because of this, kiosks can operate outside of the service's norms and policies.

"40-25 was developed for dining facilities; kiosks [are] an extension of dining facilities," William Duff, a logistics manager for the Army who works on its food policy, said at the military logistics conference last month. "Some of the [food in kiosks] meets 40-25, some don't."

Meanwhile, the service is also moving forward with plans to allow soldiers to use their meal cards at commissaries -- a move that could immediately neutralize the purpose of kiosks, which simply offer a snapshot of a commissary's options.

With that option on the table, it's unclear why the Army is investing heavily in kiosks, if they may quickly become obsolete as soldiers buy meals directly from commissaries. The service also plans to keep dining facilities open, but it's unclear whether there are plans for any investment in infrastructure improvements or higher-quality food.

"The Army Food Program's board of directors is currently developing a long-term plan for feeding soldiers and is exploring options such as allowing them to use their entitlements at all on-post eateries: commissaries, food courts, restaurants [and] MWR facilities," Matt Ahearn, a service spokesperson, told Military.com in a statement. "The Army is committed to providing soldiers with food options that are convenient, healthy and accessible."

Rollout of the kiosks falls under Army Materiel Command. Staff for AMC's acting commander, Lt. Gen. Christopher Mohan, and Command Sergeant Major Jimmy Sellers, declined to make either of them available for an interview.

AMC's commander was recently suspended by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, marking the first time in a decade such a dramatic move was taken against a four-star general. Gen. Charles Hamilton was suspended following Military.com's reporting that he may have inappropriately subverted the Army's command selection process to bolster the career of a subordinate officer who was deemed unfit for leadership roles.

 

 

USAF chow halls were not all that good. The only option I enjoyed, was you could get breakfast at night, and it is damned hard to screw up an omelette. There was no fast food side, at least not in the 70s-80s when I served.

I thought the food was generally crappy, with the exception of breakfast.

2 hours ago, Toastrel said:

USAF chow halls were not all that good. The only option I enjoyed, was you could get breakfast at night, and it is damned hard to screw up an omelette. There was no fast food side, at least not in the 70s-80s when I served.

I thought the food was generally crappy, with the exception of breakfast.

I'm surprised at that. We (at Fort Hood in the late 80's early 90's) had a barracks building near mine what was all Air Force, and a buddy of mine had actually switched from Air Force to the Army and I'd always been told that the food and barracks on AF bases were pretty good.

I loved breakfast at the mess hall though, 4-egg ham and cheese omelet with 4 sausage patties and all the chocolate milk I could drink. Man I miss that!

Lunch, the burgers (if made fresh for you), were awesome. You could only get 2, so I'd always ask for 2 doubles. You knew they were fresh and therefore good, when the grease was dripping down your arms. Many they were so good when they were fresh! Just 'ok' if they weren't. After eating the burgers, all the soft serve ice cream you could eat. I'd make coke floats with it (they didn't have root beer).

Wherever I went, the food was the one constant.

I always tried to make friends in 'low' places, and the mess hall was one of those 'low places'. Whenever we had to go out on an FTX, the mess hall would have to send people out with us to feed us. Working at Battalion HQ meant that I was always pretty close to the MKT (mobile kitchen trailer). My 'low place' friends would always hook me up with leftovers. One night that meant a full tray of lasagna and later a tray of pound cake. When he brought it to me, the battalion CSM, my platoon sergeant and I think the Battalion commander were all in the tent (the S1 tent) and were dumbfounded at a mere Specialist getting that kind of royal treatment when they couldn't lol. My reply was 'hey, rank has its privileges'... I suppose if it was 10 or so years later, my reply could have been "hey, I've got friends in low places" but this was well before that song was even an idea lol/ 

I get what they’re going for, but privatizing ish in the mil doesn’t exactly have a great track record (the barracks). 
 

They need to just figure out a way to keep the mess halls staffed and open for guys to eat and end the "appropriate uniform requirement” if you’re getting chow. If some terminal lance shows up in his PT gear, who gives an ish. 

I always ate good, Parris Island, Fort Knox, Guantanamo Bay, Fort Pickett, The USS HERMITAGE, even Camp Lejeune.