Eating on Board the
International Space Station
With
Bob Thirsk and Frank De Winne
(Background music playing)
Food scientists in the United States
and Russia, and in the other partnering
countries, prepare food for us in 16-day
cycles. What that means is that for any given
individual we can go through a menu for
16 days and not see the same combination of
items on two consecutive days. After the
17th day, we will start with the first day again.
Food comes up to us in containers
like these here. The ones with the red
label contain Russian food items.
The ones with the blue label contain food
from the United States or one of the
other Western partnering agencies. Each
of the containers is also identified
with the type of food that is inside as well.
For example, the blue one that I am holding
contains meats in pouches and cans, and the red one
that I am holding contains a general selection
of Russian food cans and several stabilized products.
As you can see, we are at our dinner
table. It is a table for six. We don't have
plates. Of course, we don't need plates in
space because, again, everything would just float away.
As I can demonstrate as well with
this chocolate drink here. You can just leave
it in front of you. You don't need to
put it on the table. It just stays where it is.
Also for eating. We usually
don't need knives and forks because
everything is pre-cooked.
Everything is ready for us to eat. So we
typically eat with spoons. So
here I have one of my spoon containers
... and shortly we will demonstrate
how we eat with spoons on board the ISS.
One other type of food that we eat
is fresh food. Periodically, a vehicle
will come and visit the space
station. We are expecting the space shuttle to
arrive in the next three to four
days or a Progress cargo vehicle will
arrive. And on those occasions we can
bet there will be fresh fruits and vegetables.
We don't keep fresh fruits
and vegetables on the station
because we don't have a large
fridge to store all of them for long periods
of time. But for the first few
days or weeks after a cargo vehicle
or the shuttle has visited, we do
have some fresh fruit and vegetables.
Frank is opening a container of
dehydrated fruit. He will open it very carefully
with a pair of scissors. As long as the
food sticks to itself, it is safe to be opened up.
Liquids will need to be eaten or drunk with a
straw. And it is important, since we share utensils, to
always wipe them off between each use so the next person
may feel comfortable using the utensil or pair of scissors.
Now with the package open, Frank will
use his spoon and take out some ... What is
this, Frank? These are berries. A medley of
berries with sugar. It is very tasty actually.
So he will get it to stick to his spoon
and then slowly bring it up to his mouth. If
he moves fast, then his berries will go on
(their) own trajectory and might miss his mouth.
One of the other things that we
have here on the space station to eat is
actually bonus food. Bonus food is very good
because it contains a selection of food that we
really like and that we can choose
ourselves. Of course, it still needs to meet
certain shelf life. It means that it cannot
(expire) in the time that we are here on board.
One of the examples of the bonus food that
I have in front of me is sausage for example,
Italian sausage. Which of course is very nice
to eat (and) which I share with all my crewmates.
Bonus food is also ready for tonight.
So, my clams. And this is always
in favor. And, as I said, eating on
board the space station I prefer. But
it is even more here, I think, a very social
occasion. So most of our bonus food
and goodies that we have we share with our
crewmates. Because it is more of a
pleasure to share then to enjoy it by yourself.
I have one more bonus food item here which is not
part of the standard space station menu. This is a special
type of granola bar made with maple sugar. I am
Canadian so I have a special fondness for the taste of maple sugar.
All of the bonus food items need to be
flight-qualified which means food scientists will test them to
make sure they don't contain any microbial
contamination that may cause ill health amongst the astronauts.
Frank is enjoying
his medley of berries, and
I am going to try some
thermal-stabilized pears.
One of the other aspects, of
course, about eating in space is that we
still have some waste. You see the
packages are quite small. They are made
as tiny as they can. But they
still are waste that we need to take care
of because we have very little space
on board the International Space Station.
That is why usually we are very careful when
we eat. Every package that we open, we eat it up
completely. We don't waste any food here because it's
very expensive to bring the food up to the space station.
And then once the packages are
empty, we pack them as small as we
can and then we put them in one
of those little bags as Bob can show
here. So these bags we pack as
full as we can, and then once they are
full they go into the Progress and
then they burn up on re-entry to Earth.
Really you are very careful on packing
your stuff and taking care of the environment
here on the ISS. For example, I was using a
small wipe to clean my utensils. Usually a wipe like
this we will try to use for two to three
days. We cannot afford every time to use a number of
wipes to wipe our utensils because this would
make way too much garbage here on the space station.
We are inside a
spacecraft, which means that we are
sheltered from the sun. Sunlight
is actually helpful because exposure
of our skin to sunlight on
Earth allows our body to produce
vitamin D. Living in a
spacecraft does not allow our bodies to do
that. So part of our
daily routine is to take vitamin D
tablets. We take a total of
800 units, which helps to maintain
strong healthy bones in
space. The vitamin D tablets come up
with our food packages. So we are
promptly reminded to take vitamin D.
It is also interesting that each crew develops
a fondness for one particular food item. One of our
favorites to eat for this crew of Expedition 20 is
tortillas contained in this package here, spread with honey,
lots of honey. That's one of our favorites. We
all finish up our meal each night with tortillas with
honey. It sounds like a strange combination, but
believe me, after being in space for 45 days, it is a real thrill.
So this is all for our food-tasting
session for today. It was a real pleasure that
you could join us. It is really nice as
astronauts that we can do all this, but also it is
really nice, I think, for the
nutritionists and scientists in our food labs to be able
to support this. So if you are interested in
food, maybe you could also go for a space career.
That's it for the International
Space Station. We hope you found the subject
of food and nutrition on board the
International Space Station interesting. Goodbye.