Meet team feeding Team USA at 2021 Olympics: 72,000 pounds of food

Brian Knutson has been busy.

As the director of food and nutrition services for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, he is responsible for orchestrating the sprawling operation that will help feed Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics – ensuring that athletes will continue to have access to their favorite foods even as they prepare to compete halfway around the world.

For more than a year, Knutson and his team have been coordinating with Team USA dieticians, working with local vendors and laying the groundwork for the dining operation at the USOPC’s High Performance Center at the Okura Sports Park in Setagaya City, Japan, which will serve as a local training hub around the Games.

Athletes, who are under strict restrictions about when and how they can leave the Olympic Village because of COVID-19, will have Knutson’s operation as a source of familiar food outside what the village offers.

All told, Knutson estimates his team will provide 7,000 meals for athletes and staff over a span of 27 days.

“We are serving lunch and dinner while operating each day,” Knutson wrote in an email earlier this month. “Our teams mostly eat lean meats, chicken breast, fish and vegetarian meals and of course lots of pasta and meatballs.”

Before the Games, Knutson said his staff shipped roughly 72,000 pounds of food and beverages to Tokyo from Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center is located. The shipments included in-kind products from Team USA sponsors such as Coca-Cola and Smucker’s.

Knutson’s team also has enlisted the help of a local chef, Michiko Nakamura, and coordinated with seven vendors in Japan to supply some of the key ingredients for dishes.

Knutson wrote in the email that he already has ordered 2,000 pounds of various proteins from an American-owned company in Japan, and more than 350 pounds of salmon from a local fish vendor. “And we have only just started ordering,” he added.

Knutson said his staff will primarily feed athletes from 11 teams at the Setagaya City hub — the only one of its kind for U.S. athletes at the Games — including those from swimming and track and field. The goal is to recreate meals that might be familiar to athletes, such as favorite dishes from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center, and inject Japanese flavors when possible.

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“Knowing that we cannot get all of the same ingredients, our chef has made changes to be able to reflect the flavors here in country,” Knutson wrote.

“I have seen some amazing quality produce here currently while in the prime of growing season for Japan.”

Knutson’s team, which includes five people on the ground in Japan, is working in concert with sports dieticians for individual teams to ensure that athletes are fed well. Food is served buffet style, in accordance with COVID-19 countermeasures, though dieticians also can order boxed meals for individual athletes or teams, Knutson said.