Agencies partner for Your Healthy Lifestyle Festival

FORT LEE, Va. — The Defense Commissary Agency will unveil the Your Healthy Lifestyle Festival June 6 through July 6 at 236 installations worldwide.

This inaugural event will allow patrons to see discounted prices on produce at commissary farmers markets, savings on workout equipment at exchanges and fitness events hosted by base morale, welfare and recreation activities.

With the theme “Shop Healthy! Eat Healthy! Be Healthy!” the festival reinforces the health and wellness goals of the military community, said DeCA Director and CEO Joseph H. Jeu.

“We all have a vested interest in helping service members and their families improve their health and wellness,” Jeu said. “Together, the synergy of military resale makes the installation the No. 1 destination for collaborative events such as the Your Healthy Lifestyle Festival.”

The festival combines commissary farmers markets, exchange sidewalk sales, MWR fitness events, demos, music, free nutritious food samples, prize giveaways, discount coupon offers, health and wellness information and children’s programs.

It’s no coincidence that health and wellness is a dominant theme, especially as the Department of Defense continues to roll out its Healthy Base Initiative. HBI is a project of DOD’s Operation Live Well, an initiative to boost the nutrition and fitness of service members, retirees, their families and military civilians.

“There’s a special ‘take care of our own’ mentality about military communities, and this festival embodies the best of that philosophy,” said DeCA Sales Director Randy Chandler. “Whenever commissaries, exchanges, MWR services and our industry partners collaborate like this, our customers benefit the most.”

For DeCA, the Lifestyle Festival also gives the commissary agency an opportunity to showcase its worldwide farmers market program, an event that has offered plenty of tasty fruits and vegetables for the past three years, Chandler said.

“Our commissary associates and industry partners work hard to offer quality, healthy fruits and vegetables,” Chandler said. “The creativity, imagination and excitement of the farmers markets, combined with the exchange sales and the MWR fitness events, will make this festival something our military customers cannot afford to miss.”

There will be a few locations that conduct their festivals as early as the middle of May in order to accommodate existing calendar conflicts. An overall schedule listing installations and dates can be found on the DeCA website at www.
commissaries.com/healthy-lifestyle-festival.cfm. Commissary patrons should also check the individual store Web pages for more information on farmers market dates and other scheduled events. It’s prudent for customers who live near multiple commissaries to use the DeCA website to frequent all sales in their area.

Customers are also advised to contact their local installation media for specific festival event schedules.