Go for Green-eating well to perform

  • Published
  • By Courtesy Go for Green program
120th Airlift Wing food services and installation health promotion professionals will be teaming up to bring Go for Green to the dining facility.

Go for Green is a point-of-selection food-identification program approved by the DoD Food and Nutrition Subcommittee and designed to help service members easily identify the nutritional value of food choices when eating in appropriated dining facilities. Foods are color-coded according to their nutritional impact on performance, both physical and mental.

All foods served in a dining facility are labeled by color code. "Green" labels identify foods to eat often (high-performance foods); "yellow" identifies foods to eat occasionally (moderate performance foods); and "red" labels identify foods to eat rarely (low-performance foods). Coding criteria are based on military nutrition reference standards, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and other recognized national nutrition standards.

The purpose of Go for Green is to increase awareness of healthy and high-performance food options and increase knowledge of overall good nutritional choices.

Program evaluations show that Go for Green labeling is most helpful for service members making performance-enhancing food choices; and the messages of "eating for performance" and "fueling" resonate well with service members.

Installation food service professionals have teamed with local health-promotion experts and dietitians to train the food service staff and educate the diners on the program and about the support programs available to help them use the program. Those programs include a smartphone app that can be downloaded on I-tunes and QR codes on all of the poster and marketing material displayed throughout the cafeteria.

To learn more about the program you can visit http:hprc-online.org/nutrition/go-for-green or pick up a Go for Green pocket guide at the dining facility.