Nutrition on Board the
International Space Station
With
Bob Thirsk and Frank De Winne
(Background music playing)
Today we are going to talk a little bit about
food on the ISS, on the
International Space Station.
As you can see, we have
here our table, our dinner
table, where we eat normally
every evening on board the ISS.
But of course we are not
in a restaurant here, so dinner
does not get served for us.
We have to prepare it ourselves.
It is a little bit like when
you go camping, then as well you
need to prepare everything
yourselves. You need to make sure you
have everything with you. And
then once you are at (the) camping
site, it is quite easy, but also
you need to be well prepared to eat.
So dinner is also
important to us for a social occasion
because every evening
around this table we gather with the
entire crew. We eat and
we share stories. But now a
little bit more about the
nutritional aspects of our dinner food.
Living in space is a
pleasure for any astronaut. However,
there are consequences to the
human body when living in a weightless
environment. Every single
organ system is affected in one way or
another. So food and nutrition play
an important role in helping us to maintain
proper human physiology in a
weightless environment. In particular,
we are concerned about the effect
of weightlessness on muscles and our
bones. And as Frank mentioned a
minute ago, we live in an isolated and
confined environment so the
psychological aspect of eating is important.
Muscles atrophy in space, so some of
the food items that we will describe today are
high in protein content. That�s important and
a little bit different than how we would normally
eat on Earth. Also, in space, bones tend to
demineralize. They lose calcium. So we also need
special supplements in our diet. Contain the
proper nutrients to keep bone mass and strength.
So a lot of the items that we
will be discussing today may be a
little bit atypical, might seem a
little bit imbalanced compared to an Earth
diet, but they are perfectly
tuned by the nutritionists and food
scientists for astronauts who live for
long periods of time in a weightless environment.
Yes, indeed, because we get to
enjoy all this food
around our dinner. There
are many people on the Earth that
prepared this for us
that make sure that the food
we eat is healthy and is the best
possible way that we
can live here on orbit.
So let�s discuss a little bit
about the food we have here on the
table. Well, we have different types
of food. First of all we have some Russian
food. They usually come in cans
like this. So this is a can that you can
find in any store basically. This one is
meat and vegetables. For example, with this
can we can eat up in a Russian
way. We have also other types of food
which is simply dehydrated food. These
are kinds of packages (from) which all the
water is withdrawn. And then we
simply just add hot water. A little bit like
when you have instant soups or instant
meals that you can prepare on the ground.
Other types of food are
thermal-stabilized food. This
is food which has been
cooked and prepared and sealed in
an airtight envelope.
Treated with high temperature and
perhaps radiation so that no
bacteria can divide or reproduce
inside the food. This
type of food has a shelf life of
many, many, many months.
The example I just showed you was
homemade potatoes. Another
example, one of my favorites, is
pears. In a few minutes I will
probably try to sample some of these.
All these foods are specially
processed at a lab in Houston at the Johnson
Space Center or Star City in Russia,
not too far from Moscow. Part of our preflight
training involves going to these labs,
sampling all of the more than 75 menu items
and several beverages, and ranking our
personal choices on which ones we like the best.
The nutritionists have
decided that it is important to give
us a broad spectrum of all the
nutrients that we need. But we also
have a personal preference.
And when we select our food prior to
flight, we can select special
items that (we) have special fondness for.
Yes, then of course there are
also the drinks. We also need to
drink on board here on the ISS.
Drinking of course we cannot do out
of a cup because in
weightlessness everything would just flow out.
So that is why we have these
types of drinking bags. Also inside this
is a chocolate drink, for
example. It is some instant chocolate
drink (mix) and then we fill it
up with water. And then we attach a
small straw that has a clamp on
the straw that keeps it well confined
inside. Then we can just drink it
out of the straw like an ordinary bag.
(Background music playing)