For the past five months, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, 61, and Sunita Williams, 59, have been stranded aboard the International Space Station (ISS). While their meals feature some exciting options like pizza, roast chicken, and shrimp cocktails, their diet lacks access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
The astronauts’ nutrition is carefully monitored by NASA doctors, ensuring they consume enough calories to stay healthy during the extended mission. The food they eat is developed by the Space Food Systems Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The menu includes a variety of items such as breakfast cereal with powdered milk, tuna, and even dehydrated soups and casseroles. Despite the variety, the lack of fresh produce is notable.
“There’s fresh fruit at first,” a NASA specialist explained. “But as the three months continues, that goes away — and their fruits and vegetables are packaged or freeze-dried.”
Life Rely on Packaged Food
The astronauts rely on these packaged and freeze-dried foods, which are personalised to meet their daily requirements. The meals can be reheated using a food warmer on the ISS. Meats and eggs are cooked on Earth and sent to space, ready for reheating. Other items, like dehydrated soups and casseroles, require water from the ISS’s 530-gallon tank. Interestingly, the station also recycles urine and sweat into fresh water to ensure minimal waste.
The specialist emphasized that the astronauts are well cared for despite the challenges. “Nothing is left to chance, and that includes their food,” they said. “To be accurate, it should be very clear that any weight loss is not due to a lack of provisions on the ISS. There is plenty of food, even for an extended mission.”
Astronauts Prepare their Own Food
The astronauts prepare their own meals on magnetised trays, using metal utensils to prevent items from floating away in microgravity. Yet, recent photos of Sunita Williams with a thinner frame and sunken cheeks sparked concerns about her health. Addressing these worries, Williams dismissed any notion of weight loss as “rumors.”
“There’s some rumors around out there that I’m losing weight and stuff,” she said during a video interview. “No, I’m actually right at the same amount.” She explained that her appearance is due to fluid shifts in her body caused by the weightlessness of space, not malnutrition.
NASA’s ISS food systems stock approximately 3.8 pounds of food per astronaut daily, with reserves to cover unexpected mission extensions. The system is designed to ensure astronauts have enough nutrition and variety to sustain long missions in space.
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