Just kidding. You don’t have to call, simply read on:

I don’t mean to proselytize, but a new study just demonstrated one of the powerful effects of changing to a vegetarian diet: significantly reduced bodily levels of harmful environmental compounds.  Published in the journal Environmental Research this year, the study analyzed participant levels of antibiotics and phthalate metabolites (compounds that are formed once they react with the body) before and after a 5-day “temple stay”.   While at the Guemsan Temple in Korea, the participants practiced a vegetarian diet and followed the daily routines of Buddhist monks.  They gave to the researchers a urine sample right before entering into the program and then once more shortly before the temple stay’s termination.  They also provided the researchers with accounts of the typical eating habits and the amount of tap water they drank (again, before and after).

All targeted compounds were found to be significantly lower after their five-day vegetarian diet.  Since no participants had a recent medication history and water inatke did not correlate with levels of contaminants, the authors conclude that the dietary change was responsible for the reduction.   The linear trends in animal product consumption and urinary levels of phthalates/antibiotics before the participants did the temple stay also suggest that diet is a substantial contributor to “inadvertent exposure”–The more animal products are eaten, the higher the exposure to these kinds of environmental contaminants.

It is important to note that while there was a significant reduction in the amount of antibiotic and phthalate compounds due to the vegetarian diets, the levels of antibiotics and phthalates never exceeded  “acceptable” or “tolerable” levels beforehand.  Of course, what you find to be acceptable for your body may be different from what the government has declared to be safe (with plenty of input from the relevant industries, I’m sure).

Anyhow, what this study shows superbly is that even short-term changes in your diet can really improve your bodys’ well-being.  It gives a whole new meaning to healthy eating, doesn’t it?

Recent research from the Consumer Reports Magazine found that those bagged salad mixes, most claiming to be pre-washed and ready to eat, aren’t as clean as you’d like them to be.  Thankfully, what they found wasn’t e coli, salmonella or anything as dreadful as that.  Instead, in their sample of 208 bags (representing 16 brands) they found bacteria like coliform or enterococcus that could only get there one way – fecal contamination.

Several industry experts [that Consumer Reports] consulted suggested that for leafy greens, an unacceptable level of total coliforms or enterococcus is 10,000 or more colony forming units per gram (CFU/g) or a comparable estimate. In our tests, 39 percent of samples exceeded that level for total coliforms and 23 percent for enterococcus.

Tasty.

Anyway…The bagged salad varied widely in amount of contamination, but the ones farthest from their sell-by date were often better.  As such, Consumer Reports suggest that you buy packages as far from their use-by date as you can find.  And, of course, wash your greens.  They say it won’t get rid of all the bacteria, but it will help to remove residual soil.

Happy salad eating, everyone!

Just what is a chestnut? Was roasting chestnuts really so common? Here’s the low-down on the nuts more often sung about than eaten:

American Chestnut

On the tree, the chestnut is surrounded by a thick coat of burrs. When the nut is big enough to harvest, their burr lining cracks and the nuts fall to the ground with a plop. They still have a hard shell at that point, and, as far as anecdotes go, they are mean suckers to peel. “They make fava beans look like convenience food.”

Death of the chestnut:

Chestnut trees were the East Coast’s sequoia, dwarfing surrounding trees and often outnumbering them as well for they accounted for about 1/3 of the trees running from Maine to Mississippi (Link ). It was even one of the most numerous tree on the North American continent. A fungus carried over on an imported chestnut tree from either China or Japan in the early 1900’s quickly decimated the very susceptible American population. The people of Appalachia who depended on the tree for its wood and nut exports were economically devastated the most (Link). Between 3 billion and 4 billion trees died, leaving only a few isolated trees on the entire continent by the 1950’s.

American Chestnut Habitat

The root system of the American chestnut can still survive against the blight, but the shoots do not grow very far before they are attacked by the blight. The full-grown chestnut trees in America are now mainly either of European or Asian descent. But, a whole throng of American chestnut trees were found along a hiking trail not far from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia (Link).

A born-again chestnut:

Two blight-resistant American chestnuts have been bred in California and are slowly taking up root across America, helping to reintroduce the memory of roasting chestnuts on an open fire to the next generation of carollers (Link ). You can even pre-order some from next season.

More holiday cheer: Wassailing

“Now we go a wassailing” meant in the Middle Ages let’s go get drunk and sing to our apple orchard so that the next year’s harvest will be good. Wassail is from the Anglo-Saxon Wes hal (other spellings include Waes hael), which means “Be in good health” (read).

Photo by Kate Hopkins at AccidentalHedonist.com

4 large McIntosh apples

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1/4 cup apple juice or cider

3 12-ounce bottles of ale

1 cup sherry

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

zest of 1 lemon

1. Preheat oven to 350*F.

2. Slit the skins of the apples horizontally about halfway down. Place in a greased baking dish and sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the brown sugar and the apple juice. Bake, basting frequently for about 40 minutes until all the apples are soft. Remove from oven.

3. Pour the ale and sherry into a saucepan. Add the 2 tablespoons brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and lemon zest. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the baked apples and their juice, stir thoroughly, and serve hot. Here’s another version of wassail.

Enjoy!

After creating quite a stir in the foodie blogosphere, the mainstream media, and even riling up the lethargic FDA, the industry led Smart Choices label is voluntarily suspending the promotion of its program.  They even had the Attorney General of Connecticut after them–Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that he was investigating the program and some of the companies that participate in it to see if they had violated a consumer protection law that bars deceptive marketing claims.

The FDA had sent a letter to several major food companies saying that they would be looking into whether not certain food labels and logos mislead consumers about the health benefits of certain items, and cracking down on inaccurate food labeling.  The FDA did not name names or give a time line of enforcement.  However, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, has expressed the administration’s interest in standardizing and streamlining front-of-package labels.

”There’s a growing proliferation of forms and symbols, check marks, numerical ratings, stars, heart icons and the like,” said Hamburg. ”There’s truly a cacophony of approaches, not unlike the tower of Babel.”

The New York Times

She says Americans need a label they can trust to inform them about building better diets.  The FDA’s letter may not have named specific the offending, trust-crushing products, but Dr. Hamburg wasn’t afraid to comment on the loose standards of a certain egregious labeling campaign, noting that ‘there are products that have gotten the Smart Choices check mark that are almost 50 percent sugar”.  In a phone interview with reporters, she repeatedly reference the UK traffic light system as a guide for present label guideline efforts.

In making their own labels, the industry was obviously trying avoid regulation that would make them use a structure so bluntly honest as the UK’s traffic light system: These things are bad for you; This is how much of the bad stuff this item has in it. Smart Choices attempted to avert this by only touting only the good in a food–mostly in the form of added vitamins, minerals, and fiber.     Thanks to its very lax standards on other nutritional information, like calorie and fat content, nobody trusted the Smart choices campaign.

Putting “Smart Choices” on things like Froot Loops and mayonnaise (yes, mayonnaise) may have immediately corrupted its image of doing good for the consumer, but it did help intensify the FDA’s efforts to rework its own guidelines.  Because “helping consumers make better, healthier choices for themselves is a critical part of the FDA’s public health mission,” the agency said in a statement Friday. “Consumers want and have a right to clear, accessible nutrition information that they can trust to help guide their food choices.”  Officials said that by early next year, the FDA will issue proposed standards that companies must follow in creating nutrition labels that go on the front of food packaging.  New, exciting “science- and nutrition-based” food labels could be seen on packages at the end of next year!

Still, Mike Hughes, the program’s chairman, said in a statement that they continue to “believe in the science behind the Smart Choices program”.  Adding that the “impetus for the Smart Choices program was that there were and are too many systems,” he said. “We applaud the concept of having one system nationwide.”

Yes, the reason the industry added another labeling system was because there were too many systems.  Of course.  It makes perfect sense.  You know what actually makes sense?  Ending the stupid, Smart “Froot Loops are better than a donut” Choices program.

He has earned the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal for his successes. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to him in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply. The urge to debilitate the scourge of hunger began when he took his first job in 1935 with the Civilian Conservation Corps. He worked with the unemployed on federal projects and saw first hand how hunger affected the people working for him. A lot of them were essentially starving. He later recalled, “I saw how food changed them … All of this left scars on me.”

Indeed, Borlaug had started out studying forestry, but switched to plant pathology when he considered the effect of crop disease on hunger. After graduating he began his career as a microbiologist at DuPont studying industrial and agricultural bacteriocides, fungicides, and preservatives then came the war and with it his lab was transformed to perform governmental research for the United States armed forces. They made some pretty cool stuff.

After the war, Borlaug declined DuPont’s offer to double his salary and left for Mexico to join the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program–a joint project between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture. His project in Mexico was the archetype of his future work in other countries. He and his team studied genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science, and cereal technology to make Mexico more self-sufficient in feeding its population.

His success in manipulating genetics and plant breeding made him a target for anti-genetically modified food campaigns. It has also led some to complain about the disruption to traditional farming and claimed his processes would lead to pervasive monocultures across the world:

Mr Borlaug called them naysayers and elitists, who had never known hunger but thought, for the health of the planet, that the poor should go without good food. Higher yields, he pointed out, saved marginal land and forest from farming. Inorganic fertiliser just replaced natural nutrients, and more efficiently than manure. As for cross-breeding, Mother Nature had done it first, cross-pollinating different wild grasses until they produced a grain that could eventually expand into modern bread…

Genetic engineering of plants greatly excited him. The risks, he said, were rubbish, unproven by science, while the potential benefits were endless. The transfer of useful characteristics might now take weeks, rather than decades. More lives would be saved.

The Economist

Borlaug taught and researched at Texas A&M University from 1984 until his death. He was the Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture at the university and held the Eugene Butler Endowed Chair in Agricultural Biotechnology.  Clearly, though, his most important lessons were found in his own life’s work and in his own motto, “Get the plow, start growing now.”

Not a chance, says the group Americans Against Food Taxes.  Americans Against Food Taxes is a “coalition of concerned citizens” that is strictly opposed to the sweetened beverage taxes.  However, on more than cursory view, you find that it is actually a front for the American Beverage Association.  (The media contact page leads you directly to their representatives.)  They took out a whole page ad in The Washington Post which urged congress not to “tax our groceries”.

Of course, soda taxes would seriously damage the industry’s profits, so it’s not surprising that the American Beverage Association is defending itself more actively.  Researchers like Dr. Brownell at Yale report that just like with cigarette purchases, consumer spending on sugary beverages would decline as prices rise.  Plus, the sweetened beverage industry has seemingly been under constant attack in myriad other ways as of late:

Across the country, many schools have removed soda vending machines saying they should not be plying children with sugary drinks.

Last month, the American Heart Association urged people to reduce their intake of sugary foods and beverages to lower the risk of conditions like obesity and high blood pressure — singling out soft drinks as a prime culprit.

Even President Obama has voiced a cautious openness to the tax.

”I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring,” he said, in a recent interview in Men’s Health magazine. ”There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else.”

But Mr. Obama acknowledged that there would be significant resistance to such a tax.

Kelly D. Brownell, the lead author of the study and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, said in an interview that a penny-an-ounce tax would have an immediate and powerful impact on the nation’s elevated obesity rate.

The New York Times

Furthermore, the money from a soda tax could very well pay for at least some of the health care reform measures in the works.  The Baucus health care bill, which is estimated to cost $774 billion over ten years, called for “an array of taxes and fees on high-end group insurance plans, drug and medical device makers, and other sources” to pay for itself.  No soda taxes or the like were mentioned, but according to research of the sort that lead to the soda tax revenue calculator they could make a rather big dent in health care payments.

The American Beverage Association is huge in terms of dollars available, but does it have the same power and influence as the insurance companies or the farm lobby?  Do the benefits so outweigh the negative impact on the soda industry that their dollars won’t matter? (Ha!) Will actual citizens join the group Americans Against Food Taxes?  As usual when it comes to food and politics, we shall see…

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Naturally?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: So I pick up the ball and I throw it to Naturally.

Abbott: No you don’t, you throw the ball to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That’s different.

Costello: That’s what I said.

The confusion and nonsensical back and forth found in the classic Abbot and Costello Who’s On First sketch is exactly what it feels like when trying to figure out just what exactly the natural label means on your package from the deli.  Actually following the USDA debate over definitions for things like “natural” or “naturally raised” can lead to perturbation, too.  Up until recently there actually hadn’t been very much debate.  The Food Safety and Inspection Service has one definition, while the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has another.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service says meat and poultry can be labeled “natural” if they are only minimally processed and don’t have any artificial flavorings, colorings, preservatives, or other chemical additives.  Who knows what minimally processed means.  On the other hand, the Agricultural Marketing Service says that “naturally raised” means the meat must come from animals raised with no hormone growth promoters, no antibiotics, and no animal by-products.

A commenter on Marion Nestle’s post on the same subject explains that the term “natural” is referring to the meat, while “naturally raised” refers to the livestock.  Somehow, knowing this doesn’t absolve the USDA from the confusion its perpetrated on consumers.  However, according to a federal register notice, this discombobulated terminology will soon be tackled (or see the actual docket).  Well, at least the term “natural” will be.  They are collecting commentary and seeking assistance for defining the conditions under which it will permit the voluntary claim “natural” to be used in the labeling of meat and poultry products.

I am not too hopeful; The USDA said the same thing two years ago.

Why not combine both definitions into one super meaningful label?  It would only make too much sense for the term natural to encompass both the life and post-living treatment of animals.

Furthermore, what does it mean when the word natural is found on non-meat products?  Is this also voluntary?  Who regulates that label, if anyone?  It’s doubtlessly confusing to consumers.

The definitions of terms commonly found on packaging should be clear, well-known to consumers, and definitely well-regulated.  One thing is for certain, this concerned consumer will be watching and waiting for the (much needed) developments on label legislation.

The first widespread use of fortification was in the early 1900’s.  In some areas of the United States, upwards of 60% of the population had enlarged thyroid glands, also known as goiters.  In 1924 officials all over America began iodizing salt and within ten years goiters all but disappeared.

Just before World War II, the FDA established a standard of identity for enriched flour.  A standard of identity is the set of “mandatory, federally-set requirements that determine what a food product must contain in order to be marketed under a certain name in interstate commerce”.  It’s why there is ice cream and also “frozen dessert”, or margarine and butter.  Other products, like pasta, rice, and enriched bread soon had a standard of identity of their own.

In the 1950’s, as part of a public health strategy, manufacturers began to fortify cereals with four nutrients considered most deficient in the diets of the population: thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, and iron.  The government was happy with simple fortification because it involved no extensive campaign to educate the public or induce dietary changes.  To public health officials, fortification meant that people could keep eating as they always had, but still eat better.

Fast-forward to the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Science had evolved, making the synthesis of essential vitamins and minerals cheap.  The government was still grappling with improving the nation’s health.  And, the public was becoming more aware of the role of nutrition in health (remember the reactionary “Where’s the beef?” commercial).  The cheapness of single nutrients, the implicit mandate from health officials, and the market potential for new products combined to give the food industry the impetus to go forth and fortify like never before.

By 1984, 92% of ready-to-eat cereals were fortified. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 allowed some claims about nutrient content and health benefits to be put on their products. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 allowed structure/function claims (read: more health benefits) opened the door to even more products being promoted with added vitamins and minerals. Add to that the more recent trend of fortifying foods with preventative antioxidants…and you see how you can end up with Froot Loops and Coco Crisps being labeled “Smart Choices“.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

The problem is that, without much supporting scientific data, there has been a compelling assumption permeating the food industry and, more worryingly, food and health watchers like the FDA.  The assumption is that there is no such thing as too much vitamin and mineral intake.  And so the proliferation of enriched and fortified foods, with corresponding health claims, has persisted without much serious questioning of benefits and risks.

Iron

Let’s take iron as an example of a mineral that is generally a part of the army of fortification.  There is actually more than double the amount of iron in our foods than what is necessary to maintain good iron-balanced health.  For most of us, this is not too big of a deal.  Our body isn’t very good at absorbing iron to begin with.  Unfortunately, as many as a million Americans suffer from a genetic condition known as hemochromatosis.  Their bodies absorb a little more iron than they actually use.  Without blood loss (the only way to get rid of excess iron), the iron can lead to liver and heart problems, and in some cases can cause death.  While the rates of iron-deficient anemia are at an all time low, the listing of hemochromatosis as a cause of death has increased by 60% from 1979 to 1992.  And, many believe that deaths due to hemochromatosis are still routinely “under-diagnosed, often misdiagnosed, and probably underreported.”

Folic Acid

Like many public campaigns, it is easier to convince people that something is good and right if it is ‘for the children’.  (I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just that sometimes legislation gets too much out of hand this way.)  The FDA required that folic acid be added to enriched grain products beginning January 1998.  This time there was some research.  Marion Nestle, in her book Food Politics, explains the science behind the decision and discusses the pros and cons of folic acid fortification:

Studies had revealed that mothers who consumed adequate amounts of folic acid and other vitamins during early pregnancy reduced the odds that they might bear a child with a neural tube defect by 50% or more. Although the doses used in the studies varied by more than ten-fold, and few studies distinguished between the benefits of folic acid from those of other supplementary vitamins, most (but not all) experts viewed this research as definite evidence of the need for women of childbearing age to consume more of this vitamin. Because risk factors for neural tube defects are poorly understood, and because the fetal neural tube closes before a woman might have any idea that she was pregnant, the FDA chose fortification–rather than advice to eat better diets or take supplements–as the method most likely to raise folic acid intake among women “at risk” of pregnancy.

Unlike the other nutrients used in fortification, which were added to the food supply to prevent deficiencies in large segments of the population, folic acid was expected to prevent about half of the 4,000 cases of neural tube defects that occurred each year, a very small proportion of the 3 million or so babies born the United States annually.  To prevent these few–albeit devastating–cases, fortification would be likely to raise the folic acid intake of 260 million Americans, among them many who were already obtaining adequate amounts of the vitamin from foods.   Indeed, raising folic acid intakes would produce one additional benefit: it would reduce blood levels of homocysteine, a by-product of protein metabolism associated with higher rates of coronary heart disease and stroke. The potential benefits, however, would need to be balance against a possible hazard.  Excessive amounts of folate interfere with the ability to diagnose deficiencies of vitamin B12, a problem noted with increasing frequency among the elderly. Overall, the benefits of fortification were expected to outweigh the risk, but many questions remained unanswered.

A recent article from the Economist adds to the list of negative consequences that should be considered when weighing the risks and benefits of folic acid fortification.  The Economist reports on an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that warns that the liver (where the folic acid is converted to folate) can only handle at most 1mg of folic acid a day.  That is well above recommended daily dose, which is 0.4mg.  However, the amount of fortification in some cereals can lead Americans to consumer up to 0.8mg  per standard serving.  On top of that, pregnant women are advised to take similar amounts of folic acid from supplements.

Regardless of its source, unmetabolised folic acid has been found in human blood and urine.  The body’s increased exposure to the circulating folic acid is suspected of exacerbating certain cancers.  This concern has led some countries, including the entirety of the European Union, to put programs for grain fortification on hold.  Notwithstanding, the authors of the study stress that folic acid pills are still a good idea during pregnancy, so moms-to-be or aspiring mothers should not give them up.

The Lesson Is Clear

Don’t rely on supplements, enrichments, or fortifications for your daily vitamin and mineral needs unless your nutrient needs are unique.  When asked about the functional differences between a food and a supplement, Marion Nestle writes that whole foods (1) offer the full variety of nutrients—vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc–in that food, not just the one nutrient in the supplement; (2) the amounts of the various nutrients are balanced so they don’t interfere with each other’s digestion, absorption, or metabolism; and (3) there is no possibility of harm from taking nutrients from foods.  The exception here is polar bear liver; its level of Vitamin A is actually toxic.

When considering the role of fortification in your diet, Michael Pollan’s mantra can and should be invoked.  As you peruse the grocery aisles or make your list at home, remember to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”  Following Pollan’s advice might also help you stave off death at the furry paws of the polar bear and his liver, too.

Diet Pepsi, Kraft’s macaroni & cheese, Kid Cuisine, Lunchables, and Froot Loops (now with added fiber!) are just some of the 500 processed foods getting the green “Smart Choices” label. “Smart Choices” is front-of-the-package labeling meant to help rushed or confused consumers pick healthy(er?) foods.

Sure, Diet Pepsi and Kraft’s macaroni and cheese are smart choices…compared to crack…

Ten big food processors are a part of the program, including Kellogg’s, General Mills, Kraft Foods, ConAgra Foods, Unilever, PepsiCo and Tyson Foods.  They pay the American Society of Nutrition up to $100,000 a year for the privilege of having the green check mark on their products.  Can you say conflict of interest?

These industries are probably trying to circumvent any action on part of the government to create easy-to-read healthy food labels.  They fear that Britain’s traffic light system, or some version of it, will hop the Atlantic and doom their processed ‘goods’.  In the UK, the Food Standards Agency (the government, not the food industry) developed a clear  and concise labeling system–packages have the amount of the four demonized ingredients right on the front with big colored circles.  As you might expect, green is good, and red is bad, with yellow somewhere in between.  The labeling system is voluntary, but a lot of manufacturers are using it.

Compared to “Smart Choices”, the traffic light labeling criteria is super transparent.   To understand why a certain product is a ’smart choice’, you have to find and read this rather unhelpful page.  There, they attempt to convince you that their products must meet “strict, science-based nutrition criteria”.  The science, which is not cited, was developed by an unnamed ‘coalition’.  (I’ve complained about that before.)

Which page seems to have consumer’s best interests at heart?  The traffic light or “Smart Choices”?

Some nutritionists do in fact defend the program specifically because of its “consumer friendliness”:

Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.

She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.

“The checkmark means the food item is a ‘better for you’ product, as opposed to having an x on it saying ‘Don’t eat this,’ ” Dr. Kennedy said. “Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product. They want to have a choice. They don’t want to be told ‘You must do this.’ ”

The New York Times

Did Eileen Kennedy, a so-called nutrition expert, just say that if a food doesn’t have a checkmark on it, it’s not good for you?

Hopefully, consumers are also smart enough to deduce that many companies with healthy choices haven’t bought their way into the checkmark system.  I am also optimistic that the media fury over the Smart Choices program has made many consumers aware that this is not a governmental or consumer advocate label.

I think Walter Willett, Chair of the Harvard School of Public Health, says it best:“These are horrible choices.”  Indeed.

Any bets on how long it will be before the “Smart Choices” label is forcibly expired?

First of all, the one thing that should be celebrated in conjunction with food in space is that microgravity does not affect natural swallowing processes–something scientists were rightly worried about before John Glenn (the first American to orbit Earth) tried it out in space.

Looking at how the astronauts eat would make any germaphobic really happy, I think.  Eliminating bacteria on the food is key while making space food.  No 24/7 Walgreen’s will be able to help if an astronaut got sick.  On the other hand, it might make environmentalists cringe.  Talk about excessive packaging!  Space and weight restrictions made vacuum packing dehydrated food items very necessary.  Plus, there had to be no chance of spilling or crumbs. Remember when Homer spilled his potato chips while in space? Not good.

But, you really have to overlook all that packaging to consider the fact that we, human beings, are in space!

The science that goes into making the astronaut’s food is just as cool as the science that got us into space.  Not only that, but the technologies developed for taking food into space transformed the way we eat down on Earth.  The packaging, preservatives, added minerals and vitamins that gave the astronauts healthy food that lasted their entire mission gives us a pantry full of portable, long-lasting snacks.  Not to mention fast food and other convenient, less than healthy foods.  We might not have our Twinkies and McDonald’s if it weren’t for NASA pouring a ton of money into the space program’s food development.  (Perhaps if we had more Earth-bound ambitions we wouldn’t have the obesity epidemic.)

The first astronauts in space ate bite-sized cubes of food, freeze-dried powders, and semiliquids in aluminum tubes (see picture below). Although the food had significantly improved with the next series of missions, one astronaut wanted to sneak his Commander’s favorite food on board; the first corned beef sandwich in space!  The Commander didn’t eat much of it before he realized that the crumbs could be a big problem (and, probably reluctantly, put it away).  Needless to say, NASA was more weary of what astronauts brought on board in future flights.

Today, NASA boasts that astronauts eat three meals a day and have a wide variety of foods to choose from.  There are 74 kinds of food and 20 kinds of beverages to choose from.  Plus, the usual condiments are available. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, salt and pepper are in liquid form.  “The salt and pepper would simply float away” and furthermore, “there is a danger they could clog air vents, contaminate equipment or get stuck in an astronaut’s eyes, mouth or nose.”

Food products now also have an 18-month long shelf life, and the shuttles have a galley complete with stove. Shrimp cocktail is, and has been for years, the favorite dish among Astronauts, according to NASA, because crew members like the spicy sauce that accompanies it. In fact by 2006, things had gotten so foodie that restaurateur and celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse designed a menu that included selections like “kicked-up” mashed potatoes, jambalaya and bread pudding. Nowadays, NASA food tech is being used to develop everything from shelf-stable foods for elderly populations to baby formula, to foodpacks for natural disaster victims, to highly nutritious rehabilitation foods for those incapable of chewing, to pet foods.

Obama Foodorama

Isn’t science awesome?