Giving nutrition the spotlight it deserves is a key tenet of the rapidly growing lifestyle medicine field.
Airman 1st Class Renan Arredondo and Staff Sgt. Jourdan Barrons, 2nd Audiovisual Squadron, film Tech. Sgt. Opal Poullard, Joint Culinary Center of Excellence culinary instructor at Fort Lee, Va., and Senior Airman Quion Lowe, 49th Wing Public Affairs, Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., on Aug. 9 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The 2nd AVS produced a Nutrition Kitchen series for the Air Force Surgeon General about healthy cooking choices and the science behind those choices. U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO/CYNTHIA GRIGGS
Airman 1st Class Renan Arredondo and Staff Sgt. Jourdan Barrons, 2nd Audiovisual Squadron, film Tech. Sgt. Opal Poullard, Joint Culinary Center of Excellence culinary instructor at Fort Lee, Va., and Senior Airman Quion Lowe, 49th Wing Public Affairs, Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., on Aug. 9 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The 2nd AVS produced a Nutrition Kitchen series for the Air Force Surgeon General about healthy cooking choices and the science behind those choices. U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO/CYNTHIA GRIGGS
“Nutrition Kitchen is lifestyle medicine at its best,” said Col. Mary Anne Kiel, Air Force Medical Home chief, Air Force Medical Readiness Agency, and chair the Lifestyle and Performance Medicine working group. “Food has an enormous potential to harm or to heal, but it’s surprising how infrequently we consider the types of foods we are eating every day. It is time for that to change. It’s time to empower the members of all our military services to upgrade their nutrition by making choices to keep them ready for the mission and to improve their health.”
The Nutrition Kitchen series aims to make the sometimes difficult process of both selecting and cooking nutritious meals more engaging, approachable and fun.
The recipes for this series were developed to be tasty, easy to prepare, and low-cost, all while providing the fuel necessary to “level up” service members’ health.
Service members can look forward to several delicious recipes heading their way over the next few weeks. The chef-curated dishes range from banana pancakes with date syrup to a cauliflower black bean ranchero taco bowl, a favorite among recipe taste-testers.
More conveniently, this series will be available at service member’s fingertips, where they can watch and cook completely on their own time. New episodes are set to release weekly and can be found on the Nutrition Kitchen page or via YouTube. Funded by Air Education and Training Command and a partnership with the Office of the Surgeon General, the Nutrition Kitchen Program was created by the Lifestyle and Performance Medicine Working Group and Health Promotions. The episodes were filmed and produced by 2nd Audiovisual Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, from August 2021 to February 2022.