Olive oil for astronauts

Nutritious and Tasty Diets for Space Missions

Scientists and an Italian chef are collaborating to develop nutritious and tasty diets for long-distance space missions. In particular, they believe that olive oil will play a key role. Space alters taste perception, and olive oil-flavored foods could be relevant to the nutrition and mental health of astronauts. Even comparatively small changes in altitude can change the way people perceive taste.

As you climb above 1,000 meters, the taste of food begins to change, and this means that the food could lose some of its organoleptic appeal. However, adding olive oil can help prevent this. The astronauts also said they really enjoyed the olive oil!

Astronauts in space tend to lose a lot of weight, and since the beginning of space exploration, space agencies have worked hard to combat this phenomenon. The biggest obstacle is that eating was largely unpleasant, and many astronauts still avoid some of the available foods even after many years. But food is crucial for your health during missions.

The Project

The idea is to show how extra virgin olive oil can play a key role in the functional nutrition of astronauts’ diets, as a healthy diet is important in space.

The first thing to keep in mind is that different extra virgin olive oils have different flavors and different effects on portions. The astronauts were given four small bottles of these extra virgin olive oils to flavor any meal of their choosing.

The astronauts were able to discover different flavors created by combining extra virgin olive oil with different types of foods, such as rice with shrimp, tomatoes, and asparagus. And although astronauts have used olive oil in the past, this is the first time a comprehensive study has been conducted on its use in space.

Given the nutritional properties and flavor of olive oil, while also demonstrating strong resistance to the space environment, it could easily be chosen to accompany astronauts on many other missions. In fact, all food destined for Mars would have to be shipped to Earth’s nearest neighbor a year before the astronauts departed, and these studies served as a first step to see how the food would keep.

In particular, the absence of gravity and cosmic radiation are likely to affect the composition of the extra virgin olive oil during the 18-month journey. In this sense, radiation has an oxidizing effect, and olive oil has antioxidants, which means it is very sensitive to oxidative activity.

Researchers are also planning to send unfiltered olive oil into space to see how suspended water droplets behave.