The Food on the International Space Station Menu

Astronauts eat pretty well in space compared to the days of "cubes and tubes." In the early days of manned space flight, paste from a tube was as close as you'd get to a roast beef dinner.

Aboard today's International Space Station, speeding by at five miles per second 220 miles above the Earth's surface, crew members during their three daily meals can order from a menu of more than 250 U.S. and Russian food items. Other items gradually are being introduced courtesy of the Japanese Space Agency and European Space Agency. The result is an orbiting international smorgasbord astronauts and cosmonauts can and do enjoy.

Packaging

Some food items can be served without packaging like fruit and brownies. Others, especially those requiring the additional of water, are individually packaged, the food heated in a warmer, and served up on a food tray, to which the packages have been velcroed. Tortillas are substituted for bread because they don't crumble, take up less room, and double as frisbees.

According to NASA food scientist Vickie Kloeris, "Depending on what type of product it is, the packaging types are different. But they way we assemble the food to send to orbit is we take the individual packages and stow them in a collapsable container.

Stowing the Grub

"The way we stow, on the US side," Kloeris said in a telephone interview, "is we stow it pantry-style, and what that means to us is that we stow it by food type, so we have all the meats together, all the vegetables together, all the sweets and snacks together, and so they're picking and choosing out of the containers and pulling together the meals they want to eat."

What the Astronauts Drink: Tang

Astronauts also drank Tang back in the days of Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo, and Kloeris says they still do. "Quite a bit of it, actually. We have several different flavors of Tang we utilize."

Condiments

Salt and pepper are provided in liquid form, necessary due to the microgravity environment. Condiments are popular with ISS crewmembers and not just ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. Salsa and other spicey flavorings are highly valued because of the apparent dulling of the sense of taste.

"We don't have scientific proof but there's an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence from the crewmem that they feel like their tastebuds are somewhat dulled in orbit," said Kloeris. "Where we think that is probably coming from is that they are not able to smell the foods as well in micriogravity, because aroma is such a huge part of the way food tastes to us. For instance, when you have a cold and your nose is stopped up food doesn't tase the same way to you and that's because your ability to smell it is interfered with. The same thing happens to a certain degree in microgravity for a number of reasons." Kloeris explained that a fluid shift from the lower part of the body to the upper body creates a congestion which interferes with the ability smell. Even though that dissipates in time, there are the other factors...interference from other smells in the closed station environment, having to eat from packages, and even the circulation of air that affects the smells that would normally rise from fresh-cooked food."

Heating Food

No microwave oven for the astronauts. It would interfere with the electronics. Crewm embers instead use two kinds of warmers. One is in the form of tabletop slots Russians use for their tuna fish can-size containers, the other is a plug in suitcase warmer the Americans use for their MRE-styled pouches.