Other crew members say it’s all in their head and there is no difference. There is anecdotal evidence from crew members that they feel like their taste buds are somewhat dulled in orbit. ![]() There is no scientific evidence that microgravity alters the taste of food. Kloeris: That depends on who you talk to. Koren: Does microgravity affect the taste buds? Does food taste the same on the space station? When we go to create a new item, it often takes multiple attempts, multiple adjustments, to end up with something that actually works. The tricky thing is, you can’t just take a traditional recipe and thermo-stabilize it or freeze-dry it and have it work. Pouches are much lighter in weight and more efficient to stow. Thermo-stabilization is basically canning-except we don’t do it in cans, we do it in pouches. So we convert standard recipes into shelf-stable foods through freeze-drying and thermo-stabilization. We don’t have a dedicated refrigerator or freezer for food on the space station, so everything that we send to orbit has to be shelf-stable. Kloeris: Many terrestrial recipes, especially entrees, are not shelf-stable. ![]() Koren: How do you transform a a terrestrial recipe into something that’s fit for consumption in microgravity? The military has good reasons to have that salt and fat in there, but they are negatives for our crew members. We don’t do that anymore because the MRE entrees are way too high in salt and fat for what we want for our long-duration crew members. When I came to work here, we were flying entrees from the MREs from the military. But we didn’t have nearly as much variety during the Space Shuttle program because the missions were short, so we really didn’t need a whole lot of variety. We had thermo-stabilized, freeze-dried, natural-form food, irradiated food, powdered beverages-just like we do now. Everything was shelf-stable, just like it is now. Vickie Kloeris: It really wasn’t all that different than it is now. What was the state of astronaut food back then? Marina Koren: So you got to Johnson Space Center as a food scientist in 1985. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I spoke with Kloeris about eating in space, how to pack food for a mission to Mars, and the myth of astronaut ice cream. The process of developing a microgravity-friendly food item can take months or years, says Vickie Kloeris, the food scientist who runs the ISS food-systems lab. Some of the prep veers into Food Network territory: The lab gets volunteers to judge food items on appearance, color, flavor, texture, and aroma. But most of the food has to be prepared in a laboratory and carefully tested over and over, to ensure it’s fit for consumption but can also last for two years before opening. Some items can be eaten in their natural form, like nuts and cookies. The current menu includes about 200 foods and beverages. During the holidays, they have turkey, candied yams, cornbread dressing, and other seasonal foods. The space station doesn’t have refrigerators or freezers to keep food fresh, so there’s no such thing as leftovers.ĭespite the almost alien process of eating, astronauts consume many of the foods they would find back home: scrambled eggs, spaghetti, chicken teriyaki, broccoli au gratin, oatmeal with raisins. Astronauts heat them up in an oven or add water before chowing down with a fork straight out of the package. Mealtime in microgravity usually consists of thermo-stabilized or freeze-dried entrees and snacks in disposable packages and pouches. Plates are pretty useless on the International Space Station, where food-along with everything else-floats. “I’m looking forward to putting food on a plate and eating several things at once, which you can’t do up here,” Tani said. Days before his return to Earth in 2008, NASA astronaut Daniel Tani told reporters he couldn’t wait to do something very ordinary after spending four months in space.
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