Fueling Readiness: Nutrition’s role in performance and recovery

April 7, 2026 - Defence Stories

Estimated read time – 1:55

Nutrition is a capability that facilitates personnel preparation, performance, and recovery. It is essential to achieve a well-trained, motivated, and supported Defence Team, capable to sustain operations for as long as possible, critical to meet the renewed vision for Canada’s defence.

On May 5 and 6, the first Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) nutrition symposium will explore nutrition and food services research, policy, provision, and intervention strategies related to the CAF. This symposium will bring together Department of National Defence (DND) and CAF leaders, researchers, members, and nutrition enthusiasts to discuss relevant nutrition topics related to defence personnel readiness, performance, recovery, and resilience.

The symposium will feature keynote speaker Dr. Jo Fallowfield from the United Kingdom Royal Navy, presenting “A Whole System Approach to Military Nutrition: Delivering Force Readiness and Operational Human Performance Advantage.” This session will explore challenges across allied militaries and propose a whole-system approach to address military nutrition and food systems to improve health and performance.

On Day 2, Andrea Lindsay will present “Dietary Supplements: Mission-Ready or Misguided? Operation Supplement Safety,” and describe the United States Department of Defense dietary supplement and substance program for the military developed to provide evidence-based guidance on dietary supplements to optimize health and performance.

The symposium will explore the unique nutrition considerations throughout the military lifecycle in five themed panels:

• Panel 1: “Nutrition at the Beginning of the Military Lifecycle,” will discuss recruit demographics and nutrition behaviours, pre-basic military training nutrition, nutrition status at Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School, and nutrition literacy, eating disorders / disordered eating.
• Panel 2: “Nutrition to Support a Diverse Military,” will present CAF dietary preferences & nutrition behaviours, CAF food policy & provision: fresh and combat ration programs, and nutrition throughout the female military lifecycle.
• Panel 3: “Current and Future Nutrition Interventions,” will explore how to support injury prevention, recovery, and resilience with nutrition, current and future preventions from strengthening the forces, nutrition interventions via health promotion, and CAF leader modelling.
• Panel 4: “Nutrition to Support Training and Operations,” will feature Dr. Francois Haman and Dr. Lee Margolis presentations on evidence-based physiological considerations for cold operating environments and cold weather nutrition capabilities. This panel will also feature the preliminary data on nutritional status of CAF members deploying on Operation REASSURANCE and OPF2: whole-of-system support to special operations.
• Panel 5: “Dietary Supplements,” will look at CAF dietary supplement use trends, third-party certification, dietary supplement research & policy within CANSOFCOM, and CAF sports foods and dietary supplement policy.

Please join us (accessible only on the National Defence network) as we review some of the latest research, relevant evidence-based policy and provision and discuss what these mean to you!