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thedrifter
11-27-06, 07:38 PM
November 27, 2006
On Boxer, meals on schedule 24/7

By Gidget Fuentes
Staff writer

ABOARD USS BOXER— Those dreaded long, winding and tiring chow lines are history.

This big-deck amphibious assault ship, now deployed and operating in the Western Pacific, has tossed aside scheduled meals at sea in favor of feeding the crew and riders round-the-clock.

Boxer’s 24/7 operation began this summer and features extended hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner, including hot mainline meals — not just peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches — and additional specialty food bars and salad bars.

Results have exceeded the command’s expectations. “The lines are reduced significantly,” said Senior Chief Culinary Specialist Russ Paje. With the 24/7 feeding, “they can come down any time they want.”

The idea was to provide full-service meals all the time to accommodate the crew and embarked sailors and Marines, regardless of their watches and work schedules underway. Boxer first tested the system in June, and maintained it through its predeployment workups through regular replenishments of food stores.

Navy ships traditionally serve three daily meals during preset periods each day. At sea, training takes priority over scheduled mealtimes, so sailors and Marines who miss a meal are often left to suffer or grab a snack at a vending machine. With many crew members standing 6-, 8-, or 10-hour watches, “they get off at different times, and some of them … have to get a relief just to eat chow,” Paje said.

At times, he said, he was asked to hold the food line open “because we’d have a bunch of people who haven’t eaten yet.”


The presence of the Marines — about 1,000 with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit — doubled the number of people to feed and lengthened the typical hour-long wait to get a meal. Shortening the line “was a big thing,” Paje said.

Meals on the Navy’s big decks, including its aircraft carriers, mean long lines snaking through passageways and stomach-gurgling waits of an hour or more.

But Boxer’s new plan shrunk the lines by as much as 90 percent, Paje said.

“People are constantly eating,” he said. “Some people don’t get off watch at nine o’clock in the morning, and guess what? They can still get a hot breakfast, eggs to order, whatever we had to order. We replenish it every hour.”

At first, the round-the-clock feeding operation drew some skepticism.

Some thought the unlimited availability of food would get the crew fat, waste food, deplete food stores or make more work for the crew of culinary specialists and food service attendants.

Not so, said food service officials.

With meals always available, sailors and Marines can eat when they have time and when they are hungry. They choose more and healthier food items, especially under the new 21-day standardized menu, and pick from a constant availability of fresh vegetable and fruit salads as well as sandwiches.

“I have not run out of food yet. The other ships have, and they are not on 24 hours,” Paje said with a chuckle.

Sailors and Marines can grab a second helping or wait a few hours to eat again, without having to wait for meal hours. “They’re not as in the rush to get there, because they can get it later,” noted Chief Mass Communication Specialist Mike Hatfield. “We get more productivity out of our guys because of it.”

Hatfield, for one, thinks that it also might spur more sailors to eat healthier “because they don’t have to pack it all in one meal if they know they have to tide themselves over.”

Food specialists found that less food was being wasted since famished diners didn’t feel the need to pile their trays or plates high to satisfy their hunger. “My waste has gone down a lot,” Paje said.

A 24/7 food operation might sound like a lot of work for the culinary specialists preparing the meals and food service attendants helping out at the messes.

“It was like a big ball, it’s just rolling and rolling. It seems endless” at times, Paje said.

“It seems more of a workload, but it’s not,” he said. “It’s all about … time management.”

Food service runs two daytime crews that overlap. A night crew works from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Far fewer boxed lunches — a staple for crew members working the late-night hours or early- morning shifts — are now prepared, mostly just for medical emergencies. And gone are the “early chow” passes.

Paje enjoyed explaining the new routine to a few engineers who asked for early chow passes. He told them: “You guys can now get up any time of day and eat all night long, all day long.”

Ellie

thedrifter
11-28-06, 08:34 AM
November 27, 2006
Shipboard meals offer more nutrition, less fat

By Gidget Fuentes
Staff writer

Every seagoing sailor and skipper knows that a crew’s morale is inextricably linked to shipboard food. But the mainstay of naval shipboard life — the daily menu that feeds you breakfast, lunch and dinner — is getting overhauled.

Shipboard food is going on a diet — and if it works as planned, sailors might be, as well.

The Navy in October introduced a new and standardized menu designed to inject more health into every meal served on ships across the globe. Officials want to set a new course for a healthier fleet with a menu that incorporates some favorite foods and tried-and- true recipes, but that also offers more foods that are lighter on fats and calories and dense in nutrients.

With the standardized menu, every ship in the fleet will serve the same basic meals that are healthier than what’s offered now. Gone will be the hodgepodge of meals, the disparate menus and the long list of food supplies required to sustain them.

The new menu runs on a 21-day cycle and is based on far fewer food items — such as entrees or vegetable side dishes — than the existing 35-day cycle, which uses 2,500 separate food items, many never or rarely served. The new menu includes just 450 different food items and offers 84 main entrees.

“What we did was just scale down the line items [and] ensure that there is one healthy option … per meal, and just advocate consistency across the board on every ship so everyone has an opportunity to eat well,” said Elizabeth Haldeman, food service division deputy director with Navy Family Support in Navy Exchange Service Command.

Until now, meals have varied by day and ship since skippers have had discretion in crafting individual menus. The practice causes fluctuations and uncertainty in food stores, supplies and meal planning, officials said. With such disparity, some ships offer healthy foods while others have menus heavy with fattening foods or light on vegetables.

“It’s a lot of menus with ‘club’ spinach [with bacon and cheese], fried okra, pizza and wings — and all four items are high fat,” noted Haldeman.

And that practice has Navy officials concerned about the fleet’s long-term health. “We need to take a look at the health of the sailor and recognize that our role with the food is going to have a big impact on overall health,” she said.

So officials crafted a new and healthier menu that will become standard fare across the fleet by 2008.

A ‘robust’ menu

The new menu still has plenty of choices and variety, officials say. And while it features healthier offerings and more nutrient-laden entrees with fewer calories and less fat, some old favorites are still included. But the emphasis on health is obvious.

Sailors can eat steamed vegetables or creamed spinach, for example, or can dine on herb-crusted chicken, wild rice, pasta primavera, bean burritos or vegetarian lasagna, among other dishes and sides. They can choose from new protein salads, such as curried turkey, grilled shrimp or beans and rice. They can eat regular potato fries that are precooked and baked in the galley’s oven — or opt for sweet potato fries that have no unhealthy trans fats.

The hope, said Jennifer Person, a Navy dietitian and nutrition programs manager, is that “as long as it’s flavorful, they’ll continue to go back and eat that item.”

The new menu will be “very robust, very flavorful,” added Haldeman.

The 21-day menu includes chicken, beef, pork, seafood and fish dishes, and includes a regular surf-and-turf meal of fish or seafood and steak each cycle. Sailors will get smaller servings of some foods, such as mashed potatoes, but larger portions of healthier items, such as steamed vegetables. Sandwiches, soups, fruit and specialty bars, desserts, gelatin, cakes and pies will remain, along with packaged items such as dry cereal.

But forget your love of greasy fried chicken. The Navy plans to deep-six its deep-fat fryers, and some ships already have set theirs aside. Some “prefried” items, precooked and then reheated in galley ovens, remain on the menu.

“It’s going to be healthier for everybody,” said Master Chief Culinary Specialist (SW/AW) Augusto Ejanda, Naval Surface Forces’ top culinary specialist.

But the Navy isn’t exactly force-feeding the fleet with a diet.

“This is not a menu of tofu and bean sprouts,” Haldeman said, noting, “There is variety in there. It’s balanced from a nutritional perspective.”

There’s also some pragmatic leeway. Ice cream, hot dogs and barbecued ribs remain on the menu, along with pizza on Saturdays. Hamburgers, too, will remain a weekly menu mainstay, but will now be made from leaner cuts of beef. And they’ll be served alongside vegetarian, black-bean or tofu burger options.

Linking nutrition and fitness

The Navy’s new menu follows health trends in civilian society and dovetails with the Navy’s recent push to instill a culture of fitness across the fleet.

“We’re working together to preach the message,” said Person, who’s worked with Navy fitness programs. She’d like to see nutrition treated as a “military survival skill.”

“If everybody goes to boot camp and they’re instructed when they’re going to eat, when they’re going to run, when they’re going to sleep, when they’re going to smoke — which they’re not going to do — why aren’t we kind of asking them or telling them what to eat?” she explained. “If they need to be ‘ready,’ they need to be ready, they need to be fit, they need to have energy. They don’t need to have caffeine and candy bars.”

The new push has practical benefits in the galleys, too.

The menu means fewer meals made from scratch, which will ease food preparation and clean-up times in the galley. “It saves a lot of manpower, especially eating at sea,” said Senior Chief Culinary Specialist (SW) Napoleon M. Miranda, 41, top cook on the destroyer Halsey, which this year served as a test bed for the menu.

Eliminating fried foods means no used oil to dispose of as a hazardous material. A standardized menu also makes it easier to reorder and inventory food stocks, and having fewer menu items lightens the administrative load on the supply department, officials and CSs say.

Halsey’s crew got first dibs on the menu in April and reviews have generally been favorable. Among the changes: Brown rice, which has more fiber and nutrients, replaced white.

And Culinary Specialist 1st Class (SW) Johnny Lambis is a new fan of the veggie burger. “To my surprise, it was good,” said Lamb, 36, a Halsey cook. His shipmates agree. “Most of the crew likes what we have.”

“It’s more health conscious,” added Culinary Specialist 3rd Class Nigel Thomasford, 23.

And better yet, Thomasford noted, the new menu will result in fewer long work days in the galley preparing the three main daily meals plus special meals, desserts and snacks. It will mean “more time off, more down time,” he predicted.

A vegetarian, Halsey’s supply officer, Lt. Petra Pagan, 38, loves that she can choose brown rice and other healthier items. “It’s a good menu, all around.”

Stepping toward better health

Boxer Expeditionary Strike Group, now deployed in the Indian Ocean region, is serving a version of the menu. Its meals include more steamed and baked foods. Dishes are prepared without added salt, but sailors can season their foods with sodium-free products, spices and even butter available on Boxer’s “Ringside Cafe” mess decks.

Boxer’s skipper, Capt. Bruce Nichols, liked what he saw after the ship transitioned to the menu over the summer. “I think there is enough of a selection,” Nichols said during at-sea workups before the group deployed in September with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. “The Marines absolutely love the salads. They love the whole idea of salads with fresh lettuce. They tear up the salad bar.”

While some crew members first worried that they’d be eating the same meals over and over, “they actually are getting to see greater variety on the 21-day menu than [eating] at McDonald’s,” he said.

With the previous menu, “you had too much variety, and not everyone liked all the variety,” said Senior Chief Culinary Specialist Russ Paje, Boxer’s top cook. The new menu is smaller, but “there’s a lot of choices here,” Paje said.

Larger ships like Boxer, which handle several messes and feed more people than ships like Hasley, can offer creative meals within the standardized menu. “The goal is to have variety for them, to make it feel like a home setting,” Paje noted.

Still, pizza, tacos and burgers remain crew favorites, said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dave Anspach, Boxer’s food service officer.

Culinary Specialist Seaman Recruit Nicholas Hughes, 18, manned the hot-dog bar one day. He had no complaints about his food choices. “It’s pretty good. It’s got a good selection,” he said.

Ellie