Guest: Dr. Charles Bourland. Topics: Astronaut food, space issues regarding food, nutrition, body waste, and more. Dr. Charles Bourland was our guest today regarding the book, "The Astronaut's Cookbook: Tales, Recipes, and More." Dr. Bourland co-authored the book with Gregory Vogt. This book is available through the One Giant Leap Foundation book page as an Amazon partner. You can order the book using www.amazon.com/dp/1441906231/ref=onegialeafou-20. In the first part of the program, Dr. Bourland introduced us to the subject of space food and nutrition, told us how he just happened to get into this field when he finished his PhD, and what the food program with NASA was like when he first joined the organization. Its a fascinating history focusing on subjects we don't often have the opportunity to talk about on The Space Show. Our discussion was wide ranging including the use of food additives, the space toilet, body waste, radiation, food digestion, calcium, food transit times, and iron in microgravity. We also talked about why there is no cooking of food in space, toxics even from baking a loaf of bread, and much more. Questions were asked about taste, appetite, and odor in space. We talked about possible gender differences in nutrition and diet. You might be surprised with what you hear Dr. Bourland say on these subjects. In our second segment, we compared food and food preparation onboard a submarine to what goes on in space with astronauts. Dr. Bourland brought us current with calorie counting in space, astronaut food and menu choices and more. He was asked about alcohol in space and you might find it interesting the difference with the US versus the Russian ISS crews. Dr. Bourland told us about the Coke and Pepsi wars, beverage use in space, why no soft drinks are now used given the carbon dioxide and what this does in microgravity. In our third and final segment, we started off talking about iodized food. They use no iodized salt as the water contains sufficient quantities of it. This is an interesting story so don't miss it. We looked to the future of space food and learned that it will likely be vegetarian. Listen to the explanation for this. Charles told us about various experiments that have been done regarding live food, even with goldfish (not the crackers!). We even talked about the space food pill that seems to enter discussions from time to time. As you will hear, we need the consistency and the chewing to absorb the nutrition. Don't miss this discussion. Toward the end of the show talked about possible differences in a space tourist diet and nutritional requirements from that of a trained astronaut. Charles had some interesting points about this as there is no doubt that at some point down the road there will be a need for long duration spaceflight food and nutrition for tourists. Later he said the ideal space food was fresh and following fresh was frozen. He goes through the entire list of food formats and ranks them as to their quality. If you have a question or comment for Dr. Charles Bourland, you can email him at cbourlan@dishmail.net.
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The Space Show
