Astrobromatology (SPACE FOOD) with Maggie Coblentz

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Astro means celestial body or star in ancient Greek and broma in Greek means food. So of course, space food. Thisologist is an artist and designer turned scientist who got their masters in industrial design from RISD. They have researched space food at MIT. They worked in the science division at the Nat Geo Society. They've sent MISO to ferment on the International Space Station. They've studied solar ovens in Norway, looked at bread making in space and attended the UN's meeting of the committee on the peaceful uses of outer space. They also found it an initiative called field scape that connects artists and scientists to work creatively and collaboratively, which is great. We'll talk about that intersection as well as powdered meats, orange breakfast beverages, Martian gardening, espresso and zero G. How eating without gravity is like having COVID, canned stews, stinky roommates, contraband, cornbief, velcro, fatigue, wearing a space helmet on the roller coaster of a parabolic flight and the future of food with artist, researcher, space food expert and thus astro-bromatologist Maggie Koblen. Maggie Koblen's she-her. I talked to so many people Maggie. I asked them about their jobs and you have one of the weirdest. It's so cool. It's so like space food. Like who does that? And the answer is Maggie. That's nuts. Does it come up at dinner parties? Does it come up at like let me introduce you to Maggie? She wears a helmet on a vomit comet to smell sizzling Miraflotte. Does that come up? It does. I have a lot of names from friends. Space Maggie. I have a friend who calls me astro-bastronomer. Space Witch. We have a friend who works in now, who works in spectroscopy. We call her the mistress of space rainbows. I think that just means you're very well-loved. I feel like the question you must get the most is like how can I do this? Does that come up a lot? Yeah. Or I think it's more just this maybe bewilderment. How did you come to do what you do? Or why do you do what you do? I'm not sure how many people are aspiring space food experts, but there's always a lot of questions. When the Martian came out, did you feel like that's it? I'm going to talk about potatoes to acquaintances for the rest of my life. It's been 48 souls since I planted the potatoes, so now it's time to reap and re-so. They grew even better than I expected. I now have 400 healthy potato plants. I thought that was so cool. I was just so excited that the Martian was actually interviewing space food experts and bringing research into their process. So it felt like, okay, this is there's a lot of directions. One could take this. Okay, quick a side. Andy Weir's 2011 book The Martian was made into a movie in 2015, and in it Matt Damon tried to grow potatoes on Mars. Afterward, NASA consulted with the International Potato Center to see if this could be done because it would be helpful to have potatoes on Mars. So they tried with this Mars-esque soil from Peru, but Mars dirt is toxic to human and plant life. So five years later in 2021, this astrophysics professor figured out that certain bacteria might gobble up the toxic compounds in Mars soil. And as of a 2024 article titled Detoxifying Mars, the bio catalytic elimination of omnipresent perchlorates, NASA announced that it'll try this method for cleaning the soil and the mostly subterranean ice on Mars. So perhaps space taters might one day be on the menu when we bail on this planet. So science imitates art. Now you also you have a background in art and design too. How did this all kind of come about? It's a really wide general question, and I'm sorry, but I literally don't know even where to begin because it's so cool. Sometimes I also don't know where to begin, but it's true. For me it fits, but it also feels like a little bit of a jump. I think space is changing so much. The field of space, so it's not just scientists, engineers, technologists, but there's a lot of different disciplines who are contributing. My goal in starting this research and never was not actually to get a job, although that's where I landed with space food. I was approaching it very much with the designers or industrial designers lens and looking at how do people live in space? I thought that was such a weird question and really stretched my imagination. So investigating the design of the International Space Station and how it's built, what's inside, what kind of furniture do they have? What are the space suits like? What is the food like? How does this inform the way that they can conduct their work? How they bring culture up there? The systems in place who's allowed to go, who's not allowed to go because of these different designed objects in zero gravity and how everything flips on its head once you get to space. So as a designer and artist, someone who loves to make things, this entire process changes in zero G. So with food, it's fluid dynamics. Do you need to be strapped to the wall while you eat or while you conduct your work? This was my entry point as a designer. Do they have models on the ground of the space station for you to kind of conceptualize or do you have to go based on renderings and CAD and photos? For me, I was going off of photos when I started this investigation. So I was looking at things online and interviewing people and a lot of anecdotal insights from astronauts just to describe in their own words what this space looked like. And then testing came later when I joined a new research lab and started to have access to things like zero G flights. There must be so much Velcro, right? There's a lot of Velcro. Everything's strapped down. But one of my favorite stories about the ISS, it actually didn't even include a dining table at first. So it was just thought that these humans almost treated like robots. We're just going to go up there, float around, Velcro their food to the walls, strap themselves to the walls while they why they ate. And of course, naturally human beings want to gather. They want to have a place to come together and enjoy this very limited break in their day. And so one day an astronaut just found some scrap piece of material and strapped it to the wall to make a table, which really has no practical use in space. As you say, like you need Velcro, you can't just have something sitting on a table. But still it was this human nature to have some kind of design intervention or meal and for for socializing with their fellow crewmates. As you can see, this is open concept. I imagine that your work has to encompass anthropology, technology, physiology, gastroenterology from technology. It must involve so many different disciplines. Coming from an artistic background is that part of what is exciting about it is that kind of learning and tinkering. Yeah, indeed. I borrow pieces from all of these different fields or allergies to create something new. What are they eating up there in general? I always feel like if you grew up, you know, pre-2000, like you might have heard of astronauts drinking a lot of tang. Don't have that problem. So tang was born in 1957. It was created by Food Daddy William Mitchell, who also made such franken foods as cool whip, quick set jello, and the eternally baffling pop rocks. Now, the parent company, General Foods, had military contracts, no surprise. And in tests, shelf stable tang with its sugar, multidextrin, and vitamin C helped mask the taste of the space capsule water supply. So in the early 1960s, tang was sent into space, and John Glenn thus became an astro-influencer and tang took off like a rocket. Now, in 2013, NASA's Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin astronaut publicly stated during an awards show, Tang Sucks. When you sort of started this and you started logging, okay, like how are they eating? What are they eating now? What was the baseline? What were they eating? The history of space food is so fascinating that the different space agencies have their own dining modules or their own cooking equipment. So NASA and the European Space Agency seem to share different systems for preparing food on the ground to go up to space, and then how do you actually prepare the food in space? So originally, it was canned, which is extremely heavy, and not the most practical, although it is a mode of preserving food. But this is heavy and costly to actually get to space. So at some point, we're creating freeze-dried foods. So this is just a a dried food like Tang, but it's not always powdered form. It usually looks more like a sponge. I actually have some sitting in front of me right now. So it's a burger patty that's been snapped in half and packed into this plastic wrap with all of the liquid removed from it. So it weighs practically nothing. A tiny circle of velcro on the side, so an astronaut could attach it to a wall, and there's a barcode on it, because astronauts are everything that they eat is monitored from the ground. So they would scan in what they eat so that their nutritionist could supervise this for them, and it tells you how much water to add. So there's a little spout on the top of the package, and they would attach it to something called the rehydration station, which is on the International Space Station. It's something almost like 90 or 99 percent of the water that's used is recycled from human urine, human perspiration, and then that gets processed, and you put that back into your food as a warmer hot water, and then let it sit and cut the package open with scissors and eat it directly from the bag. So a lot of these foods are modeled after MREs, which are military rations. So quick background, given the astronomical shipping costs to destination orbit, the price to ship water up there is roughly $83,000 per gallon. So you got to recycle, folks, the International Space Station's WPA, or water processor assembly, involves harvesting water vapor, and then that's in conjunction with a UPA, which is short for urine processor assembly. Don't you dare wretch, don't do it, I hate to break it to you. Where do you think your water comes from? A huge spark with sparrow? In heaven? No, dude, your Naujin is filled with liquid that used to be frog snot, and cruise ship toilets and elephant tears. So according also to a 2023 space.com article titled NASA just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS, and engineers are thrilled. The end result of this water reclamation is far superior to what municipal water systems produce on the ground. So yeah, if you drink a glass of earthling tap water with your MRE, or meal ready to eat, it is technically grosser than what they eat miles above the planet. They're like, it's war, chow. Exactly. You do it. Right? Shut up and chow down. Exactly. But today it's different. There's, I think, Lavaza sent up an espresso machine because the coffee is again, just powdered like an instant coffee you add water. Another company called Zeroty Kitchen sent up an oven so they could bake the first cookie in space. There's lots of people who are trying to help these poor astronauts with food. When we're talking like first space flights, I imagine this wasn't even a concern for decades because they were up in fact pretty quickly, right? When they even start worrying about like, you're going to need a snack. Yeah, I guess it would be around the Apollo era when astronauts started going to space for longer term and they would actually need to bring days of food supply and keep it in their capsule with them. And then now the food plans are changing even more where the current food system is supposed to last five years. And they have the deep space food program at NASA at least to start to think about what is food for Mars and what are the challenges associated with preparing those foods, how will different space environment conditions impact the food? Will it degrade? Will it color a texture, nutrition value change for these trips where the return date is not even known? So the deep space food challenge concluded in 2024 and the three winners were a professor and student team from UC Riverside who invented no lux which means without light to grow plants and fungi in a dark little chamber using acetate to stimulate growth instead of light. And another winner of this challenge was this nifty contraption called satide which stands for safe appliance, tidy, efficient and delicious. Okay and it uses centrifugal force to press food against a heated cylinder thus enabling the layering of foods such as the coveted slice of saw in space. But the grand prize of the deep space food challenge went to this Florida team who created something called nucleus. Again they love an acronym. It stands for nutritional closed loop eco unit system and that helps farm greens and vegetables and edible bugs with minimal effort from the crew. It's kind of a set it and forget it, Ron Popeel situation. At that point are they trying to terraform and grow, you know, Matt Damon potatoes in a bubble? Sometimes I'm sitting in a room and I don't know if I'm on a set of a science fiction film or if I'm actually in a real science meeting because you think is this really what's happening right now? There's, you know, the veggie project on the ISS that's growing fresh ingredients in space. But these are really just herbs and little pieces of lettuce that are more for emotional well-being to add a sprig to your food. It's unrealistic that an astronaut could truly sustain themselves off of what is possible to grow in space at least with what technology we have now. In this suitcase sized ISS garden launched in 2014 in its grown my zoon of mustard, red Russian kale, some edible zinniah flowers and some Chinese cabbage. So it's just nice to have a sprig here and there but it is no hometown buffet salad bar because you were very far from a hometown and NASA does not have the budget for all you can eat. Also, hometown buffet doesn't even exist anymore since the start of COVID people were not down with just a Plexiglas sneeze guard. So America's favorite unlimited cafeteria experience went belly up. Did you have to look through a lot of research on what do the astronauts say or they like this is dog shit like I couldn't even eat it. So for me it was more interviews, anecdotal reports from astronauts mostly ESA and NASA astronauts and oftentimes when interviewing them they sort of start off by saying you know food doesn't matter this was my life dream to go to space. I was perhaps trained in the military and it's no concern for me because I'm just in space. I'm just happy to be here. But then you get a little bit deeper into the conversation and then the complaining starts horrible and they don't have anywhere to put their food waste so they get this tremendous food fatigue because they have to eat their food out of this plastic and they can't just throw it out because it could rot or even you know combust so they actually have to lick all of the packages clean after every single meal. There's no fridge to store their leftovers. One Italian astronaut Paulina Spauley told me the chocolates horrible so he's complaining about the chocolates the truth comes out eventually. If you're thirsty for more tea made from used water let's peer into the September 2025 article from Frontiers in Psychology titled Food Acceptability and Selection by astronauts on International Space Station Mission informs strategies and risks for deep space exploration which surveyed 15 astronauts on the International Space Station. What are some takeaways? The breakfast foods and the lack of vegetables sucked the most and quote astronauts limited their menu selections to personal favorites early in the mission and did not consume foods they did not like a habit that could compromise nutritional intake and this is nothing new as far back as the 1963 Mercury flight astronaut Elgordan Cooper was served the first freeze-dried meals and through his 34-hour mission he ate only 700 of the 2400 calories available to him. So space food is at the ultimate appetite suppressant? Unfortunately sometimes yes. So the 2017 study initial assessment of the nutritional quality of the space food system over three years of ambient storage in the journal microgravity indicated that potassium calcium vitamin D and vitamin K concentrations in space food may not be adequate even before storage and then during storage they observed the degradation of it so decreases in certain vitamins just from sitting around and there was a 2025 article in Nature titled Feeding the Cosmos Tackling Personalized Space Nutrition and the Leaky Gut Challenge and I was like what and that found evidence that suggested increased intestinal permeability referred to as Leaky Gut Syndrome which further disrupts nutrient absorption and immune regulation. How does one fix that? The authors proposed bioengineering some really nutrient dense crops adding antioxidants to the meals and tailoring foods to specific astronauts genomes. Now if there were a yelp for NASA what would the reviews say we're lucky because in that food acceptability study I mentioned before astronauts who were identified anonymously I guess so was not to hurt anyone's feelings dished up their real thoughts and one remarked there are not enough vegetables and fruit and these go fast too much nuts and too much soup so we are always down to just soup and nuts haha they said because vegetables and fruit get eaten more quickly. Astronaut B said I have noticed that items are becoming a bit dull variety and new foods at this point in the mission is the most welcome addition J begged for sauces saying almost everything could benefit from condiments. Astronaut B again submitted some remarks it read like the confessional booth on a reality show I'm living for them bitching that I have a crew member that is eating a specific diet because of their food choices we burn through many of the foods I like very quickly the perceived variety is reduced and the repetition of food selections is increased this specific diet by one crew member they said has an adverse effect on the rest of the crew so imagine someone stealing your keesh from the employee fridge at work but you are 250 miles above your home planet you share a cubicle that smells like gym shorts and you have to drink each others pee I would have gone on an untethered space walk by like day three I'm out did you have to eat any of it I have eaten some of it I have a personal collection of space food with me at all times I have actually have something I have a few really special ones I'm waiting for the day I don't know this one I'm holding right now it's from March 2016 it's steak wow it's actually not freeze dry it kind of feels like a piece of rubber so I'm waiting for a special day to open that and it may or may not be eaten by next to a hospital okay the ice cream sandwiches that we used to get it like discover your own centers and things like that do they like them up there can they eat the whole thing do they eat them up there so that is not really space food which is probably I know it's very disappointing news I actually did a school presentation on space ice cream I think in grade two which life is full circle but that is a demonstration of the freeze drying technology but at least it would not be eaten in that form because it has to be rehydrated otherwise these little crumb flyaways if you've ever actually had a chance to eat these ice cream bars or freeze dried ice cream it crumbles almost as soon as you take a bite into it so those little flyaways in the space station are highly problematic I live in a lot so okay let's say that you have a couple of bars in your pantry which to be honest I do because for some reason I've always loved dehydrated ice cream bars I don't know why if there's just nostalgia or if it's just like when else can you eat chalk but should I be rehydrating that in hot water and then eating it as a goopy mess to really get the astronaut experience I will report back on this ice cream rehydration experiment later in the episode it's soaking right now but for now expeditions to the international space station usually last about six months and it's a joint operation between Europe the United States Russia Canada and Japan now the craft itself the ISS is around the size of a football field inside though the habitable area is 13,000 cubic feet which is about 1300 square feet or the size of a small one story three bedroom house typically there are seven crew members on the ISS at a time but as they're swapping out or if you get marooned up there which happens there might be more the record is 13 at once 13 people in a three bedroom house all breathing each other's air vying for one fresh arugula leaf drinking lukewarm instant coffee so if you're out there if you have two roommates and you're eating a can of progressive for dinner you're living the high life oh speaking of canned food magi is giving me more of a show and tell here which I would take any day over a taste and smell you know it's not the kind of can you would feel comfortable actually opening and eating wow it's from the european space agency braised calf cheeks with vegetables in balsamic vinegar sauce so I think the european space agency maybe has a different take on the menu than nasa but nasa they do have scrambled eggs it looks like your dish sponge so it's cube of yellow that you add water and eat they have teriyaki chicken I think that's super popular apparently the fish is not a fan favorite because your crewmates don't enjoy the smell it's a tiny capsule so you can imagine that anything you eat or heat up and open is going to you know add its own special aromas into this shared space I recently encountered jacks as menus that's the japanese space agency and I decided if i'm going to space i'm signing up for their menu all of the foods are made from different research institutes and universities so i think already that's just adding a lot of flavor and excitement and they have soy glazed eel and fried chicken and all sorts of different mochi desserts i'm on board but to file under the only thing in the world improving in 2025 is european space agency astronaut sofi adenos personal space selections so she tapped the world's most michael and star an internationally lauded female chef and sofi peak to craft the bonus food items she'll get up there and they include fwagra cream on toasted brioche with candy lemon lobster biscuits with crab and caraway parsnip veluete with curry and smoked haddock so to the long list of spacecraft words that i don't know ad veluete actually take that back because i looked it up and it's a buttery savoury gravy that means mother sauce which probably sounds much more elegant in french now other international bonus items have included maple cookies for a canadian rice with beef flavored stew and macro with teriyaki sauce for japanese crew members and beef rabbioli and beef stroganoff with noodles for the us team i'm surprised that there's so much beef did that surprise you at all like what sources of food were selected it wouldn't be my take but i think it actually didn't surprise me it felt like okay this is again sort of telling of how at least the current nasa menu is being designed and for who protein is probably important in space not that you can't get that from vegetarian food or other options but it did seem quite yeah meat heavy chicken beef yeah like meat and potatoes like a kind of classic american menu uh yeah and the most of the you know internationals as i said like teriyaki chicken but it's still kind of an american take on that dish and you mentioned something about fishnels and i know that your work deals with the aromas that we might be missing on earth and the sounds of cooking do this senses work similarly or is there anything that's blunted it's very different um at least from what ashrenauts report you know if you're having lunch at the office versus your home versus a beautiful beach backdrop your experience of eating is is going to change it might not be something that we think about so eating food in this tiny capsule that's louder and smaller than an airplane is is already not the best place to start there's physiological changes in the body happening to ashrenauts it's something they call space face so they almost look like not quite like chipmunk but their cheeks puff up so they have fluids are rising in the body in zero g so they have a bit of congestion in their face which affects how they can smell and how they can taste some ashrenauts reported that it was almost like if you have a cold and you can't really taste your food or things just taste a little bit off and then the second thing is just the environment of space so well first you're eating something out of a plastic bag um including your coffee drinking from a straw so you're not having this experience of sipping your coffee feeling the warmth on your face the aromas are rising all these different things ashrenauts tell us that this space station smells like a gym locker because it's this tiny space I mean I already described how their water is made from urine and perspiration when they have to work out for hours of the day what do you do with your sweaty shirt you can't just dry it or ring it out so they'll often hang them in front of the ventilation systems oh dear um there's lots going on so a recent article titled what does the international space station smell like published by the hill divulged that former NASA ashrenauts god kelly likened the odor to a jail he wants visited describing it as a combination of antiseptic garbage and body odor he said we used the odor in we wipe rinse off shower but there's a little body odor going on for sure he continued mostly it's just exercise closed people wear for a couple of weeks without washing he also added per the article that in zero g bodily smells such as farts tend to link her I should note that on all of the menus that I looked at I only saw beans once oh I can absolutely feel and smell that and almost taste it which is so it's so challenging but it's a dream so I totally get that but at the same time you you really have to make sure that morale is up in order to perform well right mm-hmm so there's the stereotype that seems to be true the ashrenauts love hot sauce and I think that's that's one of the reasons just to try to you know add salt to add hot sauce to boost boost that flavor when it comes to those smells and the sounds too I think one thing that's really interesting about your work is you know you've been on these flights to test out cooking and I'm like oh is there cooking in space I always figured that they were just like eating like granola bar which are too crummy but I didn't even think about the preparation like where does the preparation come into it the preparation a present is mostly on the ground so yeah all this food is prepared in different lab contexts and packaged and probably put into some kind of quarantine tested and then goes to space even the the vegetable project I referenced earlier where they're growing herbs and different things in space to see how it works the ashrenauts usually aren't allowed to eat them and even like touching them or interacting with them is extremely restricted I mean I won't get into toileting on this conversation but you can imagine there's a whole long list of challenges to do with that and zero gravity so they're very concerned with ashrenauts getting sick getting food poisoning in space because what would you do so for that reason most food is not actually prepared in space join me if you will in reading the 2013 NBC news article vomit in space ashrenaut tells why it's not so easy which number one wrongly assumes that I thought it'd be easy but it continues that TLDR they have really good double sealed barf bags and a 2022 poppsi article took a downtown with the piece what happens if you get diarrhea in space the thesis is the vacuum toilet per usual plus emotium or the more wearable solution a space diaper and you've created something that's like a helmet where you can actually smell and feel your food more right like how did that design come about my space food helmet came about because I was going to go on this zero gravity flight and because I was working with food and liquids and small edible things they were concerned that you know this could get in the way of other people's experiments because this was a research flight so we had I think around 20 different engineers and scientists on this flight all conducting quite serious science experiments and they wanted me to have a glove box which is commonly used in science so it is basically what it sounds like it's a box a clear box with gloves where you can insert your hands and then you don't actually put your hands inside the box because you're really putting your hands inside the gloves inside the box if that makes sense yeah and then you can see yourself conducting the experiment everything is very contained and sterile and scientific I didn't want to use this because it didn't really make sense for food how could I eat because my face is over here my hands are over here so then I decided I will just make a glove box around my face and this became this space food helmet where I had and I also just had this vision of myself almost like a goldfish like you know trying to catch my food with my mouth so I had this giant aquarium actually found this aquarium supplier manufacturer who produced these different sizes of clear domes and spheres and so I ordered one for my face and then 3D printed this harness so I could yeah put my hands inside and they couldn't say no to me because I followed all the rules it was this lightly different format they just wanted to make sure that I had to I had to practice my helmet removal strategy so if I started choking in zero G I could have like have this quick release or throw you know if I threw up which isn't comment on the vomit comment how was the vomit comment I had an amazing time I think everybody on that flight was my mouth I've never smiled so big in my life I was smiling ear to ear it was such a blast I mean there's 20 parabolas so the plane is you know going in this parabolic maneuver pitching down at 45 degrees and then up at 45 degrees and then you have experience zero G and hyper G at the base of those parabolas and hyper G is also wild experience I think that's around 1.8 G so you feel like you're at the bottom of the ocean floor you have to quickly get to the bottom of the plane lie yourself down you can barely move your head you feel like you have the weight of the world on you a friend described it to me like if you ever had one of those dreams where you feel like someone's pinning you down it kind of feels a little bit like that so you have that and then all of a sudden you start floating and then you have to take advantage of this 30 second moment in weightlessness to conduct different aspects of your experiment so I designed mine around a tasting menu so these small bites of things that I could smell something here something taste something at these different moments of of weightlessness what did you I gather from that research like what worked and what didn't I think what I gathered was what you can do in 30 seconds of weightlessness is unsurprisingly very limited so that was a huge challenge I also gathered that being in weightlessness is a lot of fun and it's so fascinating but just having to relearn how you use your body for the most basic of tasks including eating including switching a knob turning on your camera how you position your elbows and it's just a really surreal experience almost like being a baby and trying to learn how to walk your legs are not needed and which is also really interesting to think about accessibility in space and things that are useful here on earth are not necessary in a zero g environment so you get to think through all of these ways of existing differently so that's like a the holistic experience that I took from it and then just the pure joy and playfulness that at least through this experiment we were able to bring to it which I think when you look at an astronaut schedule their entire day is planned into these 15 minute increments of different tasks and operations their time is so valuable when they're up there on space they barely have time to do anything and so for our experiment same thing it had to be lined by line exactly what you're going to do but can we intervene and leave room for mistakes and leave room for improvisation during one of Maggie's food tests on that zero g parabolic flight horribly nicknamed the vomit comet she wanted to see if eating rehydrated meals while listening to the sounds of crackling frying food improve the experience or if smelling aromas of food enhanced the bland taste and then with astronauts I conducted some on earth taste tests and interviews with virtual reality to kind of customize these different experiences for one astronaut who grew up near an apple orchard they wanted to have this experience of eating outside so could they you know eat something freeze-dried while using this virtual reality to kind of have this nostalgic feeling of being back on earth and at least in this this context of this experiment they you know it was highly effective and at least like evoke these stories and help draw out what the importance of culture and ritual and food was for them in an environment where that's not always part of the discussion do they eat less up there or more up there because they're going through so many calories like exercising to keep their muscle mass and bone density like do they need to eat more like is it important for them to keep their appetite I think they're eating less up there because they're reporting to experience this food fatigue for all the reasons that we you know generally unpleasant there's another story I love of this these twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly one went to space one was an astronaut did not go to space and they wanted to conduct this really interesting genetic study on these individuals because they were identical twins so really understanding what happens to the body in space compared to you know the second version of yourself on earth and they wanted the twin who did not get to go to space to have eat the identical menu to his brother and he said absolutely not there is no way if I'm not going to space there is no way you're forcing me to to eat that food so there were some gaps in the being able to understand like what really happens to the body with this diet but I think that they're heavily monitored and encouraged to eat specific things and each each meal lists the calories that I'm sure is customized for the astronaut and their body type and they would do lots of different testing on earth before they went to space to understand the metabolism and working with nutritionists and different consultants which I think can be quite frustrating oh I'm sure I think that putting that kind of restriction on yourself when there's not necessarily like a primal need to is really difficult food is so personal right how do we give autonomy to human beings in space how do we let people make decisions around their own health and well-being in an environment that's incredibly controlled because you have to jump through all these foods so much bureaucracy so many safety protocols which I sometimes call these excuses and how can we like find ways around that that include a bit more personality or something different yeah and that's incredibly exciting what are some of those restrictions like what are some of those excuses that you came up against I just think the level and this isn't necessarily an excuse I think a lot of this very much is legitimate and necessary designing the experiments I had to log every detail to the type of ink that was in my pen that I was using to label to the glue that precise tape that I was using of course like the materials if I was 3D printing something because they want to understand you know how these materials might interact with something else is it flammable is it toxic could it produce an aroma so in the case of the experiment I sent to the space station at the very last minute somebody when it was just about to be loaded into the SpaceX rocket it was like it's producing some smell and we're very concerned and then I had to remind them like this is a food product it does smell a little bit but it's not just concerning this is fermentation it is food yeah can I ask some questions from listeners because they had some really good ones okay but before we hear your questions let's donate to a cause theologist choosing this week Maggie chose astro access org which is a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion and human space exploration and since it's founding in 2021 astro access has conducted five microgravity missions in which astro access ambassadors disabled scientists veteran students athletes and artists perform demonstrations on board parabolic flights with the zero gravity corporation and astro access says if we can make space accessible we can make any space accessible so a donation will go to astroaccess org thanks to Maggie and to sponsors of the show okay let's float some patreon questions to Maggie MJ first time question asker sleepy john candle Olivia Ford Sonya bird Curtis dog anesthesia press cedar Lauren harder glitter tornado Ashley Buford and hc wanted to know hc asked has there ever been a vegan person in space before mj was like first time question asker are astronauts do they have anything specialized for food allergies or religious purposes wanted to know is it just too bad so sad for these guys sleepy john asked how do they handle food allergies how do they minimize things Olivia asked to avoid things that might cause dietary discomfort that can't be comfortable in space so yeah do you have to take that into consideration or is it really like you know you want to be an astronaut you better not be celiac I don't think it's that strict I think things have definitely improved there are quite a few menu options I mean peanut butter is easy to avoid but let's say it was something like soy or something else that could be integrated into other products that would be probably pretty difficult and I think this is where ethics really come into play is especially for you know thinking about deep space missions whether that's Mars or even just return to the moon or long term space missions of another nature can you select people based on their ability to tolerate certain foods and different conditions and I'm not I'm not sure what the resolution on that is but I think it's super complex so bad news vegans non dairy folks egg allergies NASA is knocked down with your dietary restrictions kind of like an elderly aunt on Thanksgiving they're like it's too hard I'd have to make too many dishes not everyone wants to eat but people and space agencies can evolve and in the 20 30s there's a planned Mars mission that will be all vegetarian why is this lucky Martin senior research scientist my acupar told NBC News that meat and dairy don't preserve long enough to take to Mars and that quote bringing a cow on the mission is not an option and in terms of something like severe celiac that could exacerbate medical conditions through cross contamination you might literally be shit out of luck luckily breads not popular in space so it's not so much of an issue is it too many crumbs crumbs too many crumbs we don't like crumbs in space apparently um so tortillas are a fan favorite and I'm sure they have lots of gluten free options for that because you just wrap it up you can eat it floating you know a few people asked about tortillas megchatsy says that they are good friends with someone who was a good friend with Zena cardman who's an astronaut commander in the SpaceX crew 11 mission that launched to the ISS this August and they have it on good authority that tortillas are a hot commodity up there for their practicality but they're not currently able to ask Zena if space has been giving her any weird cravings so tortillas are indeed a popular item up there they are yeah because you can I mean a tortilla is a wrap it's a plate it's a vessel you can do anything with a tortilla that makes so much more sense than instead of like a yeah like sourdough is not happening up there right yeah and they I mean tortillas last a long time they pack flat genius yeah genius tortillas solving space problems do you ever find that people have cravings anesthesia press but dixie miss o disemis peter shyse hack win and Michael a terrier mind wanted to know if there been recorded instances of astronauts who have rogue cravings Michael wanted to know rogue cravings sounds very extreme I mean that you definitely hear the classic craving for a cold beer I think a lot of people could relate to that but I think cold things in general are craved because this rehydration station it's hot water it's warm water it's room temperature water but there's not really access to a refrigerator and I never thought about that until it was described to me and you know cold food might not be for everyone but a refreshing drink or just like something chilly and fresh things of course all fresh foods lettuce biting into something fresh those are all extremely limited chocolate ice cream real ice cream pizza it's like basic stuff the chocolate yeah the chocolate is interesting to me I should get back to that but Joshua Martin first time crush jaskar asked are you allowed to have a beer in space and do you get hammered off of two do they even allow it up there or they like do you know how expensive this machinery is you're not being buzzed using it there's got to be some contraband things I mean people are people no one's told me anything NASA astronauts will tell me anything but that I think they get asked all the time is there booze there has to be booze and then you know do the cosmonauts bring up vodka and everyone wants to know but beer I think no I think canned you know carbonated beverages are a little bit challenging in space and alcohol generally speaking yeah I don't think they like working and drinking up there yeah maybe one day I'm sure cosmonauts looks like water looks like water yeah one European space agency astronaut actually complimented the chef saying during a feedback survey interview that we all agreed that we are enjoying this food but we have no doubt that it would taste much better if we had some wine with it as well but booze is verboten now although in July of 1969 Buzz Aldrin took some communion wine with him aboard Apollo 11 but in terms of contraband just a side note it's not worth it just ask Gemini 3 astronaut John W. Young who confessed that quote I hit a sandwich in my space suit was corned beef went to space the crumbs went everywhere but back to booze it's not just drunk piloting or regrettable social media content at stake here the chemistry of alcohol could throw the whole water recovery system out of whack so don't even think of smuggling a wine cooler or mouthwash or aftershave or perfume with you no matter how much stink needs masking but without red wine how are you going to justify a treat for antioxidants in 2023 there was a Danish astronaut who developed chocolate bars called space crafted alongside a food scientist and on the ingredient list were dark chocolate and nearly 70 other natural ingredients such as seaweed kale probiotics magnesium he didn't just bring his own though he packed 75 to share with his crewmates which is like a stellar way to win over office people that you'll be very close with for half a year oh on that note Marin Molly wanted to know they said Danish astronaut Andreas Morgensen brought specialty chocolate bars to the ISS on his 2023 mission I'm curious to know more about those in the ingredients apparently he also made chocolate moose for his crew during the mission do certain astronauts say like I gotta have this particular chocolate like is it tough to just bring up a snickers or something there's always like a technical term for things I think they call them like crew select items oh so they get their choose from their menu which it could be a hundred or so items and then they have a few items which they can like grocery store items they just have to pass certain tests that they can be repackaged appropriately or meet the safety standard needs so they they get a little a little thumb make them feel special and they get a tiny treat yeah tiny treat it's like being a kid right good in the car ride you can have this later so Brian Chinning against wanted to know I realize this may be superficial and silly but what about treats sometimes you just want a piece cake gosh darn it would this be considered a luxury food and therefore not offered does it help morale it definitely helps morale I mean I don't think sadly you can get that piece of cake whenever you want it that's life up there right now but maybe one day I know they sent like um Hagenauts bars or magnum bars I don't know what kind they were but these ice cream bars they got sent up to space in a freezer because there was a freezer going up oh maybe with some blood samples like when a freezer is going up to the space station with something for science because that's the priority if there's space they might just sneak something in there for the astronauts but then when I was talking to one of the astronauts who was complaining about that again because they apparently they gave them only the tiny versions not the full size version and they thought that was really cheap of them oh thanks for the fun really and here we go I hope you're hungry for nothing have you heard of the expanse the expanse books yeah and I've also I actually have not read them and I have it's a TV show also as far as I know oh it's okay that's lasagna it's voila oh sit down let's see colby evan says the expanse books give a lot of page time to bulbs of coffee and I asked if that is already a thing and Alice and D said there are some fictional instances of space food are there any fictional instances of space food done right for example there is kibble as a presumably low cost shelf stable option the expanse books it's not described in much detail beyond color there's a red no white one but yeah uh Alice and D is curious about your thoughts about space kibble space kibble it has like dog food isn't it kibble yeah like if okay so I have a dog on earth right she could be eating different things every day but we feed her you know frozen pucks right thawed frozen pucks and she's fine the vet is like this is great for her is there any reason why human beings couldn't just be like here's your puck with sweet potato and chicken have a good life i mean i think that's kind of what they're doing right now which is a bit sad yeah that makes sense yeah that's like kind of what it is but i've never heard of these coffee bulbs sounds beautiful yeah right i'll have that here yes here say a coffee bulb does sound like just walking down the street with like it it sounds like it would have a good hand feel yes you know look at off a tree right what about different like cultural recipes or things that make them feel connected to their home or make them feel more like themselves this was also on the minds of Rachel Bayer a or taiga Nick Reed storm fire goddess Gabi Ashumati Te Agigemon Marin Malley Charlotte Parkinson picky eater warlock full-time who subsists on various grules Nick Reed and brain shenanigans oh and Gabi Ha Semite wanted to know about cultural considerations and personal preferences and if food choices change based on the crew is there anything about that you know let's say that you really miss your mom's curry you know yeah i think there's been a few stories that resonated with me there was kimchi has been to space i know that there was with the first Korean astronaut kimchi was specially prepared and and freeze-dried so it wasn't a living fermented food but it was you know understood that this is something of extreme cultural significance and should figure out a way for it to go to space in another instance with jacks that the Japanese space agency and astronaut wanted to bring Sakura flower not as food but as Sakura flower to space to remind them of home and it wasn't allowed to bring this flower so they used a traditional method of preserving this flower insult and almost disguising it as a food product so that it could be snuck into the menu and then it could arrive in space like this oh yeah it's really beautiful there's a picture of the astronaut with this floating flower and this sphere staring lovingly gazing at it floating in weightlessness and then some of this is food diplomacy too i mean in the case of kimchi it's i hope that the astronaut enjoyed it but i think it's also decisions from these governments and these space agencies to also make a statement and bring culture with intention to the space station yeah well several people wanted to know about equipment shantamaskane aga memnon katrina victoria chaplain shardin kelly kefee and junkie wanted to know katrina as how do they heat food in space to the vamikra wave that would probably interfere with some sensitive equipment or something right katrina asked yeah aga memnon said like how do they make things hot shant wanted to know do electric or gas stove tops are they even used in space is it all just kind of hot water based good question today it is mostly water based i think there was this old school method they had this device it looked like a briefcase like truly and you open it up almost like this pinini press slash briefcase where you would put your food inside out these heat pads and you would close the briefcase wait you know a minute open it up and eat your food or in the old can days i think there was even this little hole where you could insert the can and maybe with heat up around the can but today it's mostly mostly water so no no stove tops no frying none of those things sadly so yes because there's no gravity to influence the heat rising cooler settling and the high energy draws could like pop a fuse ovens have been tough also food floats there was an experimental zero g kitchen oven used to bake chocolate chip cookies via kind of a bizarre branding deal with double tree hotel but that was experimental ovens back on earth and there are some pouch warmers and used but for now nothing very appetizing although once again that 2024 deep space food challenge did come up with the prototype of a centrifugal canister oven and while the name sated meaning safe appliance tidy efficient and delicious could have benefited from an artist's collaboration with perhaps a poet or some punch up from a marketing copywriter it does mean that humankind took one giant leap toward fresh brownies in space not there yet but we're getting closer but with the space food race china recently whipped our asses releasing a video of astronauts on their tangong space station using a new on board hot air oven which is like a very advanced and expensive air fryer they were making chicken wings they look really good i would love a toaster like pop your toast and then just float up into zero g yeah but it's got to be a tortilla toaster like little flying discs kind of like flying saucers right yeah lunette de Villa valby listening curious nerd wanted to know about hydration curious nerd said i've read that astronauts can become easily dehydrated due to fluid shifts and low water content of food and alterations and physical mechanisms of thirst a lunette wanted to know do they have to drink extra water because so many things are dried or i imagine to having a pee in space is like not the vibe you know do they have to drink a lot more water that's a really good question i'd want to say yes it seems logical that they would have to drink more and they are working out a lot and in this confined space from experience what i know from like Arctic feared fieldwork and speaking to a lot of people who do this kind of work as well like there's a problem with people almost intentionally or subconsciously dehydrating themselves because as you said like going to the bathroom is so inconvenient that you'll try to avoid it all costs so you'll like intentionally not drink water so that you don't have to continuously go through the logistics of peeing which brings me to a question i'm happy and proud to ask on behalf of Katrina Emily Krieger Jesse Cole as a few other people Megan Ratcliffe, Kelly Shaver and Bopey wanted to know Bopey said what comes in must go out my question is does the amount and type of waste created go into consideration of food available Christina wanted to know does the lack of gravity affect processes like chewing let's see another person asked about parastosis but really like to put it simply Emily Krieger wanted to know part of my asking but are cruciferous and other fart inducing foods purposely avoided in space Jesse said i heard it smells like fart and bio on the ISS how do they help keep people less gassy the menu is very much designed with that in mind that being said everyone's body is different so right to say what's you know what makes you fart doesn't necessarily make me fart so it's a little experimental but the body functions in the same way when astronauts first went to space they didn't know if they would even be able to pee or do any of these basic functions but in fact muscles and bodies still have their inner mechanics and things go in and come out as you said but the toilet i heard the toilet's always breaking so they're very sensitive about that yeah that's not good so plumber a future career space plumber with research stations they always say the most important people are not the scientists they're the people who can you know the plumber the electrician the firefighters and with the space station they have to be all those people in one right they need more astro traits people exactly yeah traits get a certificate in space traits what about the crumbs how are they picking those up they don't have a dustbuster up there right they do have some kind of crazy vacuum because they is for shaving so there's these techniques where you kind of like shave right into the vacuum and for food i think it's just try to be clean you can't have the crumbs actually in my space food helmet this was a big problem i didn't think of this this was a small but large oversight i had these little kind of like nerd candies if you ever had those they were these popping sizzling candies because part of my tasting menu was this champagne ritual of just having that or like you can't crack the cold beer but can you have this fizzing sensation in your mouth so i open this container and then all these tiny little candies floating up they got in my nose they got in my ear they got in my hair i was picking them out for days you're like that's a no go yeah i was like right there we're not very scientific insight you don't know until you try it right um huh that what planet would you want to have dinner on if you could go i mean it definitely has to be a frozen planet i'm an ice queen like i can't drink a room temperature anything yeah so you gotta pick accordingly i have to pick accordingly you gotta get your space daddy yeah i just have either that or just like exhaust all the urine cubes from the supply what about where would you go would you need hot stuff would you do a venus i i'm just i'm a Saturn i'm a Saturn person Saturn all the way it's just i just want those rings that's all i care about i don't even care about anything else i just i see myself on Saturn whatever i'm doing that's where i'll be this is a good question to ask around like the holiday table yeah where are you gonna eat where would you be yeah what would you eat and Saturn's like you know there's like a sushi restaurant where they have the conveyor belts yes that's me and Saturn they're just going by on the rings i love that the ring is the conveyor belt you would just look off like ooh cornflakes yeah i can't believe you see what it well what's the hardest thing about doing this what is just what be devil's you vex is you i think it's convincing people in certain rooms why something matters and like getting to the heart of a thing because sometimes it's just like is it practical is it efficient can we be productive instead of like okay we're humans like it's so basic but that's the biggest upwards battle for the work yeah is trying to find that venn diagram of practicality but also like humanity and enjoying something like reminding yourself you're not a robot right and it's not just i don't also want to treat space as this frillous environments and i'm you know very intentionally not engaging my work in space tourism context hmm what happens if blue origin is like we're doing five six hour five day week long trips and they knock on your door to make it fancy as hell not from blue origin but i've had i have had many knocks on my door and it's been tricky for example in one case i had someone call me um their job was astronaut sales um if you can believe it that was their email signature and their job was to profile top billionaires around the world to try to figure out of these people like do they raise cars or they skydiving how do they spend their money would they potentially be the profile of a person who might buy a ticket on such flights and they thought yes wow and they thought that this is a family decision it's going to cost a lot of money it's risky you know if you have kids or a partner you're probably going to have to let them know and they might weigh in mm-hmm i was making a space food cookbook at the time that was speculative and they wanted to purchase this book and use this book as part of their sales package to send to the partner and kids of these people to say like look what your parent is doing space look what they're going to get to eat in space and that was not for me personally i've collaborated with lots of chefs and i thought i we know sometimes i think we're working together on these scientific goals and then finding out later that in fact this person wanted to open a restaurant in space and quite serious about it and this we kind of have to like backpedal a little bit like oh we're i didn't realize we were having very different conversations yeah i'm sure it's really a weird time to see you know innovation and industry and this really really big wealth disparity and who has access to things like this the division between a kind of science advantage is really interesting you know and that people can do these things it's not you know this job of astronaut sales is an actual legitimate career path now right yeah that and you have to pinch yourself like am i sitting in this room right now but yeah indeed we are what's the thing that gets you most excited about it like what to stowies gives you butterflies as a researcher and an artist i love whimsy and i think space has so much potential for being whimsical and being imaginative and just stretching my mind in ways that i didn't think were possible so that that's really exciting in terms of process and then more on like a deeper mission level i think it's the potential to and i do this you know on earth as well as i as i am an earth as i am an earth relating on my day today when i'm not dreaming and like working with scientists and field workers to think about different ways to ask these questions different ways of integrating knowledge and seeing what that leads to is also very exciting i've had some fun experiences that's for sure and they they continue to surprise me every day and it must be fun going out to eat with you because you're probably not someone who just wolves sit down while they're looking at their phone right like are you always the friend it's like we have to try this place they're doing something interesting over here this is a hidden gem in a strip mall are you that friend i am that friend but i i don't know i think for me it's more like what's happening in the home so i like going out to restaurants is always exciting but i'm equally excited i've been like this since i was a kid like i loved getting invited to my friends houses and meeting their grandparents and just seeing how somebody makes their toast how do you make your tea how do you catch your lemon like there's no right or wrong way to do something but it's always telling something about that person yeah it's such a it's such a personal and immediate type of anthropology you know for sure i cook very differently when i'm alone versus when someone else is watching yeah i don't watch my vegetable i like it's good for the microbiome yeah exactly i microwave vegetables that are so soggy and if i'm tired and hungry enough i'm like i would never serve these but i will serve them to my own mouth so i totally get it thank you so much for taking the time to let me ask you so many spacey questions thank you this is such a pleasure so ask spectacular people spacey questions because the information is just floating around it's ready to be consumed thank you so much magi for joining and chatting and for more on her work you can see magi coblence and follow her online at magi coblence and we're at allergies on blue sky and instagram i'm alleyward on both and we have shorter kid-friendly episodes called small j's s m o l o g i e s wherever you get podcasts so download a bunch for your upcoming holiday road trips tell your friends allergies merch is at oligiesmarch.com you can become patron at patreon.com slash again the link to donate to your favorite charity and a highly effective global one is give directly.org slash allergies we'll link in the show notes. Aaron Talbert admins the allergies podcast facebook group avalan malich makes our professional transcripts kelly arduire does the website no al dillworth keeps us down to earth as a scheduling producer Susan hael is our space operations commander as managing director Susan also did an incredible amount of backup research for this episode huge thank you to a Susan hael couldn't have done this one without her couldn't have done any of them without her and co-pilot editor is jich j ify and driving the editing shuttle is mercedes maintenance of m atland audio nick thorburn banged out the theme song and if you stick around to the end of the episode i tell you a secret this week's it's that i could not be less interested in going to space so consider a slot open first nasa would have me fell out like the most preliminary survey one of the questions would be like how much do you have to pee and i'd have to check the box like all the time secondly once again i'm unqualified and i would never pass the psych tests or the drug tests if i'm being honest he got me before thanksgiving but my secret my other secret is i'm gonna try this rehydrated ice cream sandwich i've had it soaking as i've been recording and don't worry i'm gonna cut out any sounds of eating all right i got you i'm gonna try this out though right now that's actually not that bad i'm being honest with you completely honest it just tastes like a melted ice cream sandwich wow how about that it tastes like when you make ice cream soup i think i also put a little bit too much room temperature water not optimal use less water you put this in the fridge really not that bad and it doesn't hurt your teeth like eating styrofoam so if you have astronaut ice cream sitting in your cabinet and you feel bad throwing it away because it was a gift pour a little hot water on that let it chill in the fridge you got yourself a medium cold ice cream sandwich good to know okay bye bye pack a Handy Handy Handy