For Soldiers at Fort Carson, Food Is Scarce

[dimsum]

Is that fried processed chicken or a hash brown ?

Yes.

 

[OldSolduer]

I second this.

We are very much spoiled when it comes to our cooks and their product.

Actually its ONE thing that if its bad morale will go in the shitter.

CFB Shilo was awesome whenever I ate there. Imagine being in Shilo AND having a shitty mess hall.

 

[rmc_wannabe]

15 years ago in Meaford every lunch haybox was the same foot long hot dogs with normal sized buns. Every second supper was veal cutlet. I found out later that food was provided by a sub contractor to a sub contractor so the meal rate contracted out was being drifted down by contractors wanting profit.

Still very much the case in Meaford.

Kingston is starting to have a similar problem in that they are constantly short kitchen staff for prep, salad line, and dishwashing.

Quite a few meals I had at Routledge Dining Hall were lower quality than the hayboxes I had in Wainwright. Including the paper plates and plastic cutlery.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Cooks are bad hurting trade ATM.

 

[The Bread Guy]

15 years ago in Meaford every lunch haybox was the same foot long hot dogs with normal sized buns. Every second supper was veal cutlet. I found out later that food was provided by a sub contractor to a sub contractor so the meal rate contracted out was being drifted down by contractors wanting profit.

Lowest bidder enters the chat

 

[Retired AF Guy]

All this talk about different messes reminds me of eating at the Brit mess in Batus. 40+ years and I can still remember it. And not in a good way!

 

[Colin Parkinson]

For the bad rep military food gets, I was always impressed with the food provided in the mess halls. I swear the CAF makes the best French fries in the country!

Hay boxes were always awesome too.

In the 1980's the food we were served both in Mess and in the field was far beyond anything I saw in a US or British Mess hall.

 

[markppcli]

Is that fried processed chicken or a hash brown ?

You need to Go Navy homie. We'd feed you better than that. I had a Snr NCM throw a temper tantrum earlier this week because his favorite milk wasn't right there for him. See we be boujee and shit.

It was advertised as chicken, but I didn’t notice anything that proved that fact.

 

[dimsum]

It was advertised as chicken, but I didn’t notice anything that proved that fact.

That’s Freedom Chicken to you

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Having eaten at a US DFAC I believe it.

100%

I did Air Assault School in Benning. We had around a 100+ people on the serial and they ordered enough food for half that.

There was always a gigantic vat of pig gravy that almost nobody would eat. I would take 4 or 5 slices of bread and douse my plate in the gravy....

Voila sustenance!

Worked with the USMC a number of times and their rations are also terrible. We had a field kitchen setup in the Desert and they had a bunch of privates taking boxes of powdered eggs, dumping them in a bucket and mixing it together.

The French Army eats pretty rustic as well. I spent some time at a few bases in France. The FFL chaps get a piece of bread and a cup of coffee for breakfast. There were no fatties to be found.

British food was OK, real greasy. Ate at the mess in Brecon and you needed to bring your KFS and Malmac plates with you LOL.

We are spoiled.

 

[AmmoTech90]

Exercise in Israel, a bag of turnips and some bread for lunch.

 

[markppcli]

Ate at the mess in Brecon and you needed to bring your KFS and Malmac plates with you LOL.

We are spoiled.

NZ guys do that in exercise, I was very happy I had a canteen cut to get fed out of. Mind you I also took some shit for asking a Staff Sargent where the tables were when we were setting up. Apparently the done thing is to serve it off the ground, which was illustrated to me as the guys asked me if I expected tables clothes and a a waiter in a bow tie.

 

[dimsum]

What I’m seeing here is that I picked the right service to join

 

[Blackadder1916]

That's disgraceful. It mentions that they collect about $22 million in R&Q, but only spend $5 million on food.

How the fuck does that happen? 22 million collected probably includes the paying of civilians and building maintenance. But that should not total 17 million
Who benefits ?

One of the differences between the US and Canada is that they pay for meals (MREs/Hay boxes) consumed/available in the field (it would/should be debited from their BAS) while Canadian soldiers get free rats.

Basic Allowance for Subsistence

Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS)
BAS is meant to offset the cost of food for service members. This allowance is based on the historic origins of the military in which the military provided room and board (or rations) as part of a member's pay. This allowance is not intended to offset the costs of meals for family members. Beginning on January 1, 2002, all enlisted members get full BAS, but pay for their meals (including those provided by the government). This is the culmination of the BAS Reform transition period.

Since BAS is intended to defray a portion of the cost of food for the service member, its level is linked to the USDA’s food cost index. Therefore, each year the BAS rate is adjusted based upon the percentage increase of the price of food as identified by the USDA. This is why the increase to BAS will not necessarily be the same percentage as that applied to the increase in the pay table, as annual pay raises are linked to the increase of private sector wages.

2024 BAS Rates:
Officers $316.98/month
Enlisted Members $460.25/month

It's easy to see where the money goes (or doesn't go).

There are 4,600 meal card holders. In simplistic terms that means 4,600 soldiers are living in single quarters and thus receive "subsistence in kind" (entitled to eat at the DFAC Warrior Restaurant without paying cash for each meal). Thus, instead of receiving their (tax free) BAS in cash (deposited along with regular pay into bank account), the BAS is credited and debited on their Leave and Earning Statement (LES). It doesn't necessarily mean that the money is given to the "appropriated fund food service operation" or even a credit equivalent to the BAS of all those soldiers.

But for s&g, how much would that be (assuming all 4,600 meal card holders are enlisted):

4,600 pers X $460.25 X 12 mths = $25,405,800

Or the amount for the daily average number of soldiers who were served food.

591 pers X $460 X 12 mths = $3,262,320

It's immediately obvious that there is a big difference between the number of meal card holders and number served. Less than 13% are getting fed from a government kitchen. But if a facility isn't open, then it's not easy to eat there.

https://home.army.mil/carson/allservices/ivy-warrior-restaurants

November schedules
Restaurants Kiosks

December schedules
Restaurants Kiosks

Individual meal rates

Ivy Warrior Restaurants	Standard Rate	Discount Rate*
Breakfast Lunch Dinner Holiday Meals	$4.35 $7 $6.05 $11.40​	$3.20 $5.35 $4.60 $8.45​

This issue was previously reported in Military Times back in March.

As DFACs close at Fort Carson, empty food kiosks leave soldiers hungry

Fort Carson has done away with weekend DFAC service.

www.militarytimes.com

And the underutilization and consolidation of US Army food service operations was discussed in this 2017 article in Military Review.

Fixing the Army’s Feeding System: We Can, and Should, Do Better

It is time for a paradigm shift in how the Army thinks of garrison feeding programs.

www.armyupress.army.mil

Or this from October,

Army to Privatize Garrison Dining

In an Oct. 16 presentation at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition, leaders announced that the service’s cadre of cooks—culinary specialists in the Army’s lexicon—will be relieved of their responsibility of running installation dining facilities under a plan currently...

www.ausa.org

 

[RangerRay]

Cooks are bad hurting trade ATM.

That’s too bad. I don’t care what anyone says, CAF cooks are worth their weight in gold.

 

[Furniture]

That’s too bad. I don’t care what anyone says, CAF cooks are worth their weight in gold.

Some are, some are terrible and crush morale with terrible food.

I've also eaten in a USN dining facility, and would prefer IMPs...

 

[RangerRay]

Some are, some are terrible and crush morale with terrible food.

I've also eaten in a USN dining facility, and would prefer IMPs...

I guess I was lucky in the few postings I’ve had compared to others here

Seriously, maybe it’s because I was cold, wet and tired, but I think the best food I had was at field kitchens and hayboxes.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I used to enjoy watching the course candidates on the Allied Winter Course, at the Norwegian Infantry School in Elverum, fighting over scraps of boiled fish like starving gulag residents which, in essence, we all were. Skiing 30-40kms a day at 20 below, plus everything else we were doing, tends to burn a few calories.

I think I survived mainly because I could stomach the (disgusting to me) pickled herring on the ubiquitous rye crackers, and rather enjoyed the crunchy fish bones left over from the boiled whatever-fisk happened to be in the pot. I also horded a secret stash of olive oil, an excellent hunger killer in extremis, which I would swig like fine whisky when no one was looking.

I still lost about 20 lbs, and you could have probably have played xylophone on my ribs

 

[quadrapiper]

Tangentially: "warrior restaurant" has to be somewhere in the Top Ten Cringiest US Terms list.

It also feels like the whole pay the servicemember then bill them for uniforms, and R&Q in settings where there's no civilian option (members on course, members without the ability to cook or access to groceries/civvy restaurants, members where the only housing option is military) is an enormous waste of time, especially with uniforms.

 

[NavyShooter]

I 'adopted' 3x USN sailors for an afternoon a few years back. There were 3 ships in Halifax visiting over the 4th of July, so I went down and asked their Senior Chiefs to have 3 deserving sailors show up and meet me to get 'adopted' for the day.

Took them out to the civvy range with some guns for some 'freedom fun' then back to the house for a spin around the lake in the boat, then let them splash away while I burned up some dinner for them on the BBQ.

2 of the 3 of them didn't know how to use a knife to cut a steak...they were learning as they went along from their buddy based on how awkward things were for them when we got to the table.

Great guys, and I'd do it again, but the feedback I got from them as I drove them back to the 'yard was that this was the best food they'd had in months...and that the never ever got steak on the ship.

I've eaten in Dutch messes which were great, British messes which are - well - less great, and on US, German, Dutch and Norwegian ships. Only German ships have food similar to ours.

This principle of leadership is key - "Know your troops and promote their welfare."

Food is the basis of almost any good plan. There's a reason that R comes before Q in R&Q.