I was hoping to raise awareness for people with food allergies. I am one of the unfortunate that have food allergies. I will admit, I did volunteer to be here. The reason is because the money is better here than what I can make at home. But the dining facilities make it even more difficult to be here and save money by putting ingredients in food that can be served without it.

For example, buttered corn, buttered green beans, gravy on the turkey, gravy on the beef, oil on the baked potatoes, etc. Those condiments should be optional [for] the person eating it. If you are allergic to dairy, soy or wheat, you’ll have limited choices at a dining facility. I know soy is cheap and that’s what they use on their grill, so anything they grill is off limits as well — real eggs, burgers, hot dogs, gyro meat.

We often have border issues and run low on food at Bagram. I thank God for online grocery stores like www.netgrocer.com or www.militaryfoodex.com. It’s a bummer having to buy my own food (or have some sent by family) and find a place to store it. But to survive, it’s necessary.

What can be done to ask the dining facilities to stop making it even harder to live/work in a war zone?

Staff Sgt. Sarah Rooks

Bagram, Afghanistan

AFN’s commercial choices

The other day I was sitting at home enjoying football on AFN when I became very amused by AFN’s choice of commercials. First was a suicide prevention commercial followed by an Air Force commercial on the prevention of sexual harassment. Immediately following the Air Force sexual harassment commercial was a commercial about mailing packages with a Humphrey Bogart wannabe. Talk about blatant sexual harassment as the Bogart character tells an attractive woman that her “package” looks fine to him. There are at least two other commercials with the same character that have a theme that can easily be perceived as sexual harassment.

It is bad enough that AFN plays terrible commercials that make all military members look like alcoholic, suicidal maniacs with gambling problems and deviant sexual behaviors, but at least they can be consistent with their message. For the record, I am not bashing AFN, but I can’t be the only person that thinks their choice of commercials is ridiculous. One last thing, please get rid of all of the religious commercials. You can’t air a commercial for every religion so please don’t air any.

Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Hunt

Hohenfels, Germany

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