Vegetarian Diet in Space Voyage

Food plays a very important role in contributing to the well-being of astronauts. A well-planned and varied menu is important for long-term space missions because a monotonous diet can lead to psychological problems and serious weight loss as experienced by some of the cosmonauts on the Mir space station.

On their current missions aboard the Space Shuttle, astronauts eat food grown and manufactured on Earth. The amount is limited to about four pounds of food per person per day because their missions are relatively short. However, for long space voyages such as a mission to Mars, food preparation and storage is a bigger challenge. A trip to Mars takes about six months each way. Counting the additional year that the astronauts would have to stay on Mars to conduct studies, they would be gone for a total of two years. At even four pounds a day, this adds up to over 17,000 pounds of food for a crew of six.

To reduce the prohibitive cost of carrying or launching huge amounts of prepackaged food, the obvious answer is to grow food on board as well as on Mars during the mission. Scientists thus have been studying how to grow vegetables and other crops in the space voyage environment. The space-grown food will be grown according to a practice known as hydroponics, in a mixture of water and nutrients rather than soil.

While growing crops and vegetables on board during a long space voyage is achievable, raising animals on board for meat and dairy is not. The reason is that raising animals requires not only a great deal of room but also many more resources than a spacecraft or space station can provide. For example, approximately ten pounds of corn is needed to produce one pound of beef. Keeping animals onboard would also seriously pollute the surrounding environment. So, adapting to a diet that is at least mainly vegetarian is necessary for a long space voyage.

In a three-year study funded by NASA and conducted several years ago by scientists at Cornell University in New York, 200 recipes were developed for astronauts that could be prepared from primarily vegetarian ingredients such as wheat, rice, soybeans and vegetables. Moreover, these key ingredients could all be grown hydroponically in artificially lighted and temperature-controlled space greenhouses. Only about 10 percent of the food calories came from Earth-manufactured food supplies, which included fats, flavor concentrates and various non-vegetarian or dairy-based foods used mostly as condiments, as well as a few luxuries such as chocolate. The goal of this study was to make the space cuisine not only nutritious, but also appealing and as similar to Earthly foods as possible.

The recipes were taste-tested by 16 volunteers, who ate the primarily vegan diet exclusively for 30 days. The result was positive. Besides appetizing menus that included such dishes as seitan tacos with lettuce and tomato sprinkled with earthmade cheese, carrot ‘drumsticks,” tempeh sloppy Joes, basil pesto with soy nuts, pasta primavera and tofu cheesecake, questions of health and nutrition were also addressed. One participant who felt better after 30 days of a vegetarian diet vowed to continue the practice in her everyday life.

Moreoever, some scientists are realizing the value of studying vegetarian nutrition since similar health issues must be addressed in space that are faced by people on Earth. As one scientist pointed out, “It is already apparent that as the diet of astronauts becomes more vegetarian, plant sources rich in calcium and high in antioxidants with a high energy content will be most desirable.” Thus it is clear that along with addressing health issues for space travelers, the findings from vegetarian nutrition studies will also benefit those who live on Earth.

In fact, there have been several vegetarian astronauts. Lieutenant Colonel Timothy J. (TJ) Creamer, NASA Astronaut and Mission Specialist candidate, is a vegetarian. Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who perished in the shuttle Columbia in 2003, was a strict vegetarian. Dr. Janice Voss, another active astronaut with over 900 hours in space, is also a vegetarian. These professionally trained individuals have demonstrated their ability to adapt to the rigors of an astronaut’s training. To them, the meatless fare of a long space voyage would be as natural as their daily diet.

But switching to a vegetarian diet may not be as difficult as some people think. For the study participants, it seemed to be a matter of becoming accustomed to a different taste. "We've noticed for example, that nobody liked our dairy substitutes, such as soy and rice milk, during our taste panels. But our subjects got used to them and accepted them just fine once they started eating them regularly," said Jean Hunter, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Cornell who was heading up the vegetarian diet project.

The Earth itself can be likened to a spacecraft on a long space voyage, with similarly limited resources. So, adoption of the vegetarian diet on ‘spaceship Earth’ is important for practical reasons as well as compassionate ones, especially since issues such as hunger and environmental pollution could effectively disappear if everyone became vegetarian. But with the grace of Master, along with the ongoing efforts of fellow practitioners and other vegetarian organizations, more and more people will surely understand the importance of the vegetarian diet.

References

http://chainreaction.asu.edu/solarsystem/digin/cuisine.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/980121154146.htm
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April00/spacefood.diet.ssl.html
http://www.medicinalfoodnews.com/vol06/issue3/space
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/food-00b.html
http://www.foodreference.com/html/fastronaut.html
http://www.okturningpoint.org/wtw/WTWPassport.pdf