Troops at Fort Carson say the base’s dining facilities often serve meals that lack nutritional value — and are sometimes unsafe to eat. Officials at the base said they are aiming to do better.
Posts on Hots & Cots, an anonymous Yelp-like app created by former Army Reserves and National Guard sergeant Robert Evans, show small portions, shortages, and poor food quality at Fort Carson facilities dating back to March. CPR News has not independently verified the photos but Evans and his team said they evaluate each photo to ensure legitimacy.
Evans started the app in 2023 after reading a scathing report from the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found that poor living conditions undermine quality of life and readiness in military barracks.
“There [are] people that join the military because they have food insecurity prior to joining, and so part of the deal of coming into [it] is the military will provide you with your place to reside [and] your food,” Evans said. “So when we're not giving soldiers and service members the proper nutrition, what does that say?”
The poor food quality reported at Fort Carson is not a stand-alone issue. The GAO report from 2023 recorded service members saying that because of food challenges at various military installations, they “generally rely on microwaveable meals or fast food, leading to health problems.” The Hots & Cots app has reviews from 330 military dining facilities with an overall rating of 3.5 on a 1-5 scale by troops using the app.
Fort Carson is home to the 4th Infantry Division, the 10th Airborne Special Forces Group and the World Class Athlete Program which aims to help soldiers compete in the Olympics while maintaining their service. Most new recruits are required to spend their first two to three years in service living in the barracks with up to 8,000 housed there at any given time. A Fort Carson official said 4,633 of them are meal card holders who rely on dining facilities.
Many living in the barracks at Fort Carson make less than $30,000 a year as junior enlisted soldiers and do not have access to kitchen equipment in their shared living quarters. Part of the reason for the level of pay is due to Basic Subsistence Allowance deductions which come out of a troop’s paycheck automatically to pay for their access to dining facilities. Each enlisted service member living in the barracks at Fort Carson has a BAS deduction of $460.25 per month, which is meant to pay for their breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.
“They have restrictions. Not all can have a hot plate in their barracks. They can't have a stove or a microwave, so they have to eat in these facilities and we're facing food insecurity in these facilities,” Evans said.
The Army has nutrition standards for the number of calories enlisted members should be able to get at dining facilities based on their level of activity. For men, the standard is 3,400 calories per day. For women, it’s 2,300 calories per day.
But images of meals posted to Hots & Cots between March and November show meals lacking substance. One post from Sept. 28 shows a thermometer at a sushi station reading 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Food safety guidelines show raw fish should be kept at 41 degrees or lower. Another post from Nov. 19 shows a pile of dry lima beans and a piece of garlic toast served as dinner at one of the dining halls. The poster said that was all that was left by the time they arrived at 5:38 p.m.
“The amount of protein you get is terrible,” said one poster on Nov. 22. “The food is: small corn barely bigger than my pinkie, rice – overcooked, bread – hard. Terrible vegetable spread but don’t worry they have chopped olives and jalapeños.”
Still, other posts show completely empty kiosks that were implemented in February to help ease the workload for Army kitchen staff.
“I know there are leaders [at Fort Carson] that are trying to make things better,” Evans said. “I don't know where things are getting held up or where the bottleneck is. I would hope that those within our congressional and Senate positions would look into this to see where these things are kind of falling apart.”
In an emailed statement, Lt. Col. Joey Payton, a spokesperson for Fort Carson, told CPR News, “[w]e recognize that we’ve had some challenges with consistency in the quality of our Soldiers’ dining experiences at our warrior restaurants and kiosks .... We’re also reinvigorating our dining facility council, which brings together brigade-level leadership to ensure leader emphasis across our food service facilities. We’re committed to ensuring our Soldiers receive quality and healthy meals and can take full advantage of their meal benefit they are entitled to receive.”
Posts in late November on Hots & Cots show the facilities at Fort Carson had made improvements for the Thanksgiving holiday meal, but Evans said it's a matter of consistency across branches and facilities, especially at a time of general peace for the nation’s military.
“Are we going to continue the consistency of providing these high-quality meals to our service members who are essentially forced to eat in these dining facilities? They sign a contract, they put their lives on the line. I think we owe it to them to make sure that they're getting the proper nutrition,” Evans said.
