Your Commissary Helps You Live Your Best Life on Purpose!
Eating more nutritiously and living a healthier lifestyle are common New Year’s resolutions, but people don’t always succeed with them, because change isn’t always easy. Fortunately, living with intention is a choice you can make daily, not just in January! That’s why Your Commissary is here to help you live your best life on purpose by offering wellness and food security resources that meet you where you are. These resources support a sustainable approach to adopting healthy habits, such as choosing nutrient-rich foods to build your basket and cooking more meals at home to fuel your body for every stage of life!
March is National Nutrition Month® – Fuel Yourself for The Future!
March 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of National Nutrition Month®, which makes now a great time to familiarize yourself with the Healthy Living resources we offer, if you haven’t already. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics created National Nutrition Month® in 1973 to educate the public on making informed food choices and developing healthful eating and physical activity habits.
Healthy Living Resources
Thinking Outside the Box (TOTB) Meal Solutions
Try Thinking Outside the Box with meal solutions that pair quick, nutritious, budget-friendly recipes with scientifically-credible, dietitian-approved guidance on how these meals can improve the nutritional quality of your diet. The meal solutions make it convenient for you to implement this, while also arming you with the knowledge you need in order to put this into practice by making simple changes to other recipes.
Shop for Your Meal Ingredients in A Few Simple Clicks!
Use Commissary CLICK2GO, our online ordering service, to instantly add the ingredients of your favorite dietitian-approved recipe to your virtual grocery cart! When you’re ready to place your order, sign in to Commissary CLICK2GO, click on the recipe banner and select the recipe you would like to add to your meal plan for the week. You can click the “Add to Cart” button beside each of the ingredients to select the specific products you need to purchase to prepare the meal.
You can also click the printer icon in the upper right-hand corner of the recipe to get a printable version of it for easy reference while cooking. Preparing nutritious food at home has never been easier!
Dietitian Approved Thumb (DAT)
We did the work for you! The Dietitian Approved Thumb (DAT) makes it easy to build your basket with us by identifying foods that are dense in nutrition from attributes such as lean proteins, healthy fats and whole grains and align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The DAT is a resource that was built exclusively for commissary customers to help them improve the overall nutrition quality of their diets by putting “Thumbs Up” tags on food items that are dietitian-approved. This makes it easier for you to identify products that can supplement your wellness needs while you’re shopping.
Dietitian Approved Fueling Stations
Visit our “grab & go” Dietitian Approved Fueling Stations near the registers at participating locations to find a variety of nutritious and high-performance foods! Visiting one of these fueling stations is a great way to stock up on quick snacks and meals you can enjoy while you’re on the go, which makes it an excellent alternative to fast food drive-thrus. You can find a list of participating locations on our website.
We also encourage you to visit our Deli Fueling Stations page to find a list of dietitian-approved salads, sandwiches and wraps that may be available in Your Commissary’s Deli Department.
Start Simple & Outline Your Goals!
DeCA Dietitian and Health & Wellness Program Manager Deborah Harris (MPH, RDN, CDCES) designed Your Commissary’s Healthy Living resources as a toolkit that you can use to build healthy habits as simply as possible and focus on your personal health & wellness goals. This toolkit is built on key concepts that help meet you where you are and work towards where you want to be:
- Adaptability. Living your best life may not look the same for everyone, so you can use any or all of these resources in whatever combination works best for your life, while saving money on the food that fuels you by shopping at Your Commissary.
- Effectiveness. Your Commissary’s Healthy Living resources are dietitian-approved, based on scientifically-credible principles of nutrition and expert guidance from official government sources, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
- Simplicity. Even simple changes, like cooking more meals at home or swapping out some recipe ingredients, can make a big impact and help you build sustainable habits.
Harris explained that she focused on these concepts to help you customize these resources to your needs and achieve lasting results. “Any efforts you make to improve the nutritional quality of your diet are steps in the right direction, so these resources were designed to encourage and support you in working towards your health & wellness goals by being flexible, easy and economical.”
Identify Your Focus
Decide on your goal(s) and browse our TOTB articles to find simple meal solutions that align with your needs, along with the nutrition education to teach you more about it.
When it comes time for the ingredients at Your Commissary, don’t forget that we’ve done the work for you! You can use the DAT shelf tags to identify products that align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans when shopping for these ingredients and other food purchases!
Shop on A Budget
Freedom’s Choice®, one of our Commissary Store Brands, offers a full line of food items that are equal to or better than the national brand. Did you know that more than half of the Freedom’s Choice® products we’ve analyzed qualify for DAT? We currently offer at least 63 of these products in the commissary system, and may identify more as we work to complete our analysis.
Plus, we encourage you to use our sales flyer to find our latest promotions and cross-reference them with the Dietitian Approved Thumb shelf tags in Your Commissary to save more on products from Freedom’s Choice® and other brands that meet these requirements!
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day is March 8
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day, March 8, commemorates the dedication of RDNs as advocates for advancing the nutrition status of Americans and people around the world. A registered dietitian nutritionist can provide guidance for people of all ages by developing a safe, realistic eating plans that can encourage motivation and help you live your best life on purpose. We would like to recognize our Agency Dietitian for her contributions in working to enhance the quality of life of service members and their families!
Get Going! Keep Going!
Although National Nutrition Month® will ultimately come to an end, your progress towards your goals can keep on going! Take time to reflect on this. Was it easier or harder than you expected? What could you do better? And, most importantly, now that you’ve built these habits, can you keep the gains you’ve made and keep going?
If so, you’re not alone! We encourage you to visit our Healthy Living page regularly to stay up-to-date on the latest information! Remember, all of the resources we listed will still be available to you. Good luck as you work to live your best life on purpose!