How can astronaut food be better?

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, it’s Flora Lichtman, and you’re listening to Science Friday.

As NASA prepares for long-term space missions to the moon and Mars, there’s a long list of considerations. Trained crew? Check. Tricked-out spaceship? Check. A meal plan? Check, but the constraints of space have meant that it isn’t really known as the final frontier of culinary imagination. Remember when astronaut Christina Koch tried to convince us that this sounded yummy during the Artemis II livestream earlier this year?

CHRISTINA KOCH: This is actually shrimp cocktail. And this has been rehydrated already. So we added water to it, and the shrimp soaked back up the water. And it’s actually pretty tasty.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is it, Christina? Is space cuisine due for a giant leap for all of astronaut-kind? And if we’re planning for the long-haul trip to Mars, just how important is the menu?

My guests have thoughts. Clayton Anderson spent 15 years as a NASA astronaut, flew twice on the ISS, back in 2007 and 2010, and he’s very familiar with the space menu. He’s currently based in Nebraska. And David Skinner is the executive chef and owner of Eculent and Ishtia, two Houston restaurants. He’s also advised NASA on how to make food for astronauts better. Clayton, David, welcome to you both.

DAVID SKINNER: Thank you for having us.

CLAYTON ANDERSON: Thank you. Honored to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Clayton, what did a normal meal look like for you when you were up in space? Is it shrimp cocktail washed down with some Tang and astronaut ice cream for dessert?

CLAYTON ANDERSON: No astronaut ice cream. Nobody eats that stuff in space. When I flew the first time for five months, there were two Russian cosmonauts and me on board. And so we had done food tastings in America, and we had done food tastings in Russia, and you rank the food that you like. And if you rank it higher than a– I don’t even remember the number, I guess probably seven– you’re going to see it in space.

And for me, with the Russian stuff, that was good. The American stuff is a little more boring. So you would have a can of Russian food and maybe a can of Russian appetizer and maybe a plastic bag full of some kind of vegetable from America. And then you’d eat all that. And then I would go for an American dessert, which was in another little plastic bag. And so the food was tasty enough, but it didn’t look too good.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, what was in the can?

CLAYTON ANDERSON: My favorite thing to have in the can was lamb with vegetables. So think of a Dinty Moore Beef Stew can. It was about the same size as that can. When you opened the top, it had fat and other stuff laying on the surface. And you heated it up and stirred it up. And they also put salt in their food. So salt plus fat, those two things equal taste. And of course, America says, oh, salt is bad, fat is bad. Remove all that, and then they take away most of the taste. So that was a typical meal for us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What’s the deal with this shrimp cocktail obsession? I’ve heard other astronauts say this, too, and it really shocks me. What’s going on there?

CLAYTON ANDERSON: Well, shrimp cocktail, the shrimp cocktail, horseradish with the sauce, the red sauce and the shrimp, the trick with shrimp cocktail in space is you have to add the right amount of water, but then you have to let it sit long enough to absorb the water, because if you do it too quickly and you bite into a shrimp and it crunches, nobody wants to bite into a shrimp that crunches. I mean, it destroys the mood.

And then the other piece of it is it’s a popular dish because of the horseradish. When you go into space and the fluids start to go up toward your head, make your sinuses puffy and make your ability to smell a little tougher, having something like that that shoots through your sinus cavity and gives you that woo-hoo, wasabi-type action, that’s preferred by astronauts. And so if you do the thing the right way and you get the right amount of water and you let it sit long enough, it is very tasty. It is very reminiscent of shrimp cocktail back on Earth.

FLORA LICHTMAN: David, as a chef, why do you think astronauts are craving this wasabi kick, this horseradish kick?

DAVID SKINNER: Well, just like Clay said, when you can’t really smell or taste anything very well because it’s like having a head cold, it’s just not that enjoyable. Matter of fact, it was funny because Clay came to the grand opening of Eculent that we had 12 years ago, and that was my first question to him, was like, what’s your favorite thing to eat in space? And he said shrimp cocktail.

And I’m like, I can’t imagine that. But I’ve had astronauts that tell me they’ve put Dijon mustard on apple pie just to make it taste halfway decent. And NASA sends up literally buckets of condiments because that’s kind of what they’re craving, is something to make the food taste good.

And I know exactly what Clay’s talking about in terms of let’s get rid of the salt, let’s get rid of the fat. When I first met the food scientists over at NASA, basically what they were doing was taking American food– Stouffer’s, whatever– and basically freeze-drying it, repackaging it. And their main concern, as you can imagine, is more nutrition. So we want to make sure the astronauts are getting the right amount of calories and everything else to keep them healthy. Taste was not number one on the list. But for a chef, taste is number one on the list. Calories are probably further down. Let’s just put it that way.

CLAYTON ANDERSON: Further down by my waist.

FLORA LICHTMAN: David, I understand that NASA came and toured your kitchen. What was this team interested in learning about, and why were there?

DAVID SKINNER: Yeah, so that was an Eculent, which is our molecular gastronomy restaurant. So we have a complete food lab at the restaurant, which is not a normal thing for most restaurants. And so we have freeze dryers and centrifuges, and we can make anything that NASA can make, and actually more.

Matter of fact, that was the comment when they all came and toured the lab. They were like, you have more equipment than NASA. And I just laughed. And I’m like, that has to be impossible. And then when I went and toured their facility, I was like, oh, it’s actually correct. But their equipment is– you know, you can put a car in their freeze dryer, and ours, you can put, like, five trays in. So it’s a scale difference for sure.

But yeah, they were very interested in the things that we’re doing. The goal I had with Eculent was to pack as much flavor in as small a bite as humanly possible, which was kind of an interesting thesis. And so we have a little BLT tomato. So if you think of a cherry tomato, but when you pop it in your mouth and eat it, it not only tastes like a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, but you have the exact same texture. So it feels like you bit into a sandwich, not a tomato. And it’s those kinds of things that they’re really interested in.

And we spent some time with them talking about Mars. I mean, this was seven years ago maybe, something like that. And they were starting to wrestle with that long of a journey, you know, how do you keep the food interesting? How do you keep it, hopefully, tasting somewhat decent? And then, of course, weight is a huge issue.

So at Eculent, what was also kind of interesting is we were able to alter the environment of the restaurant with basically a push of a button. That was the big thing about Eculent. So we could change the lighting. We would change the smell of the restaurant. The music was all choreographed. So we attacked all your senses at the same time. And you would be surprised how much just that one change can make in a diner’s experience.

Charles Spence, who’s a professor over in the UK, he’s done work with a bunch of Scottish whiskies around, you know, if you just made the lighting green, the peatiness of the scotch comes out better.

FLORA LICHTMAN: In your mouth. The taste of it.

DAVID SKINNER: In your mouth. Yeah, the taste of it. Just things like that. So we knew that there was a good scientific background for all this, but no one had really explored it. And so smell was one of the really important things. Also one of the hardest for us to figure out because, if you think about it, I mean, smell is the quickest receptor in terms of bringing back memories for people.

Real estate agents trick to selling a house is bake some cookies or an apple pie. People walk in, and it smells like home. It reminds them of grandma or whatever. And so if you can figure out the right kind of smell to put in the restaurant, at the right time– I worked with fragrance designer in Los Angeles to help us figure out the smells. I mean, we spent six months doing test dinners, just trying to figure out what smells would work. Does it come before the dish, during the dish, after the dish? Is it complementary to it, or is it the same smell?

You can really play tricks on people and accentuate things. And one of the things I talked to NASA about was you could send up little scent packets that the astronauts would break and quickly smell it, give them all of the flavor of the dish without adding a lot of weight because you’re basically sending up air. And that would really change the dynamics of the food, because I think Clay had told me before the order of importance when you’re in space is kind of like air, water, and then something tasty to eat, right?

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s so fascinating. I have to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to ask you more about how you might translate what you do in the restaurant to a spaceship. And I want to ask you to dream up the ideal menu for future space travel. Stay with us.

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Clayton, what do you think about that idea of scent packets? Would you have welcomed that in space?

CLAYTON ANDERSON: Yes. I think people like David are genius. And there’s another guy out there named Chip Davis from Mannheim Steamroller who has an idea for ambient therapy, he calls it, where he goes and digitally records sounds in various environments, like in a rainforest or on the plateaus of the Utah desert, or wherever it may be.

So now, think about this. You got David and you got Chip, and you’re on a trip to Mars at six to nine months. What if you’re sitting together and you’re smelling evergreen trees and a burning fire as you eat one of David’s hot dogs with sauerkraut or whatever it is? With the human mind and with these guys’ genius talent, you can create scenarios that allow people who are stuck with each other in a tin can traveling through space with these amazing experiences.

And you don’t have to do it every day. We used to work really hard to have a big meal. If a shuttle crew docked to the Space Station, we all had at least one big meal, where the shuttle guys brought their food, the Russian guys brought their food, and we just had a big smorgasbord. Well, these are the kind of experiences that you can do at the end of the week or during a tough time, if you had a scenario where, Lord forbid, someone lost a family member back on Earth while they’re traveling to Mars. These are those things that psychologically can be a big, big deal.

And people like David, they need to be involved in this stuff. And that’s a weakness NASA has. I believe that we haven’t pushed for this yet. And we need to push for this kind of stuff. Yeah, we’re good at technical and rocket engines and the rocket equation and creating oxygen and having sleep stations and all that, but eventually, you’ve got to go up here and you’ve got to hit the mental aspect of this.

And you have to hit it in ways that are simple, don’t weigh much, and give big impact. So if I can break something and smell evergreen trees or a pepperoni pizza or an apple pie baking, I mean, holy cow. Of course, that would make me want to eat apple pie, so there are positives and negatives with all that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Clayton, what are the biggest no-nos of space food. Like, I’m thinking crumbs on Earth, very annoying, but maybe up in space, actually dangerous?

CLAYTON ANDERSON: Yeah, I think sometimes we advertise that it’s more serious than it really is. Yeah, crumbs can be bad, but if your filter system is good, the crumbs will end up sucked against a vent that you can vacuum them up every Saturday morning, which is what I did.

But my wife sent me a bag of caramel corn from the Boy Scouts of America. And I pulled that out, and I was so excited. And then, of course, when I opened the bag, with no gravity, I mean, everything shot out. And it had been pummeled in the spaceship that it came up in, so those kernels of corn that you expected were just butchered to micro size, and it went everywhere.

Now, we chased it down and ate a lot of it, which was a lot of fun, but it does get in the way. And what they worry about is stuff getting in your eyeball or in your ears or in places you don’t want it. But I think that that’s a challenge that can be defeated by smart system design.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes. David, if you could make a meal for the first astronauts setting foot on Mars, what would be on the menu? How would you think about that challenge?

DAVID SKINNER: Yeah, so that’s a really interesting question. So one of the things that we’ve been able to do and create that’s a huge hit here on Earth and I think would be really fun in space is we’ve developed encapsulation technologies where we serve a bowl of French onion soup that’s in a little bonbon, that’s in a little sphere.

And you pop it in your mouth, and when you break it, you get the entire French onion soup experience in one bite. So the encapsulating shell is made from a series of fats that simulates the cheese. And so we can put kind of the cheese taste. And so you get that. But the inside, when it explodes, is all the flavor of French onion soup.

So I would design a solar system of spheres that were a complete dinner, but would be able to float in space. And so you could arrange your own constellation of the dinner, and then just go and bite them and enjoy that. So maybe the Earth is like dessert, and it’s a blueberry pie or something. And you’ve got French onion soup and a steak or whatever. But that’s what I’d do. I think that would be very entertaining, a lot of fun, super delicious, and something really different.

FLORA LICHTMAN: David, that’s a beautiful image. Thank you so much. David Skinner, executive chef and owner of Eculent and Ishtia, two Houston restaurants, and Clayton Anderson, retired astronaut for NASA. He spent 167 days in space between 2007 and 2010. Thank you for joining us.

DAVID SKINNER: Thank you.

CLAYTON ANDERSON: Pleasure. And I’ve had his French onion soup, and it’s delicious.

[LAUGHING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: And before we go, we want to hear from you. What’s the food you would want to eat on a trip to Mars? What’s the food you never get sick of? Tell us about it– how you make it, why you like it, and why it brings you comfort. 877-4-SCIFRI is our number. 877-4-SCIFRI.

This episode was produced by Kathleen Davis. And if you’re feeling just so satiated by all of this, leave us a review. And I just want to shout out NC at Philly, who said, “I’ve been listening to Science Friday since the early 2000s, and if for some reason I can’t listen to it for a few days, I experience withdrawal symptoms. It’s just great.” Thank you, NC at Philly. We really appreciate it. And thanks for listening. I’m Flora Lichtman.

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