- Researchers drew on recent food trends to develop nutritious and customizable drinks for astronauts.
- The drinks are made to lessen food monotony during space missions.
- Astronauts need to consume omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients to combat bone and muscle atrophy in space.
It’s no secret that Utahns are big on dirty soda. From the airing of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” to the new alternate identity of the Salt Lake Bees, the beverages have become a pop-culture phenomenon. The New York Times even connected the rise of dirty sodas with a national decline in alcohol consumption based on recent polls.
Nicole Tanner, the co-founder of Swig, once told the Times, “I’ve always known from the start that this is something that can and should go everywhere.”
Now, dirty soda really is making its way everywhere — even to space. But it isn’t the traditional dirty soda Utahns know and love embarking on that journey.
A new study published in the ACS Food Science & Technology Journal said researchers are working on a way to send customizable, nutritious drinks to space with astronauts.
A news release from the American Chemical Society said the team of researchers tested “several combinations of coconut oil fats, emulsifiers, fruit acids, sugar, flavorings and omega-3 fatty acid-rich fish oil” to create six customizable drink recipes for astronauts on space missions. The emulsions they used are commonly found in lemonades and sodas, and the release said the resulting drinks are “similar to a flat soda that has lost its carbonation.”
Astronauts would be able to choose between three “floral and citrus” drink flavors with two sweetness levels for each.
Is Swig behind this?
Has society become so addicted to sugary drinks that even astronauts can’t live without their daily fix? Not quite.
The study aimed to use “current trends in the food industry,” like dirty sodas, to “address food monotony during space missions.” Right now, astronauts eat dried, shelf-stable foods while in space, which can get boring and repetitive. Those foods also lack some of the nutrients people need, which can result in astronauts losing bone mass and muscle density while in space. The customizable drinks could “fill nutrient gaps and add variety to astronauts’ diets.”
According to the news release, “An 11-fluid-ounce (330-milliliter) serving of each new beverage contains up to one-third of the recommended daily omega-3 fatty acid intake.” A typical Utahn stopping by a soda store every day to get a 44-ounce drink would consume their daily omega-3 fatty acids in no time with these drinks.
Needed nutrients
Omega-3 fatty acids are essential nutrients in a diet, but according to Cleveland Clinic, “Your body can’t produce the amount of omega-3s you need to survive.” Instead, people must get them from the food they eat.
The need for omega-3 fatty acids becomes even more dire while in space because of the lack of gravity. According to NASA, “Without the continuous load of Earth’s gravity, the tissues that make up bones reshape themselves.” That causes cells that build new bone to slow down, while cells that break down old bone keep working at their normal pace. It’s also harder to maintain muscle mass because in microgravity you don’t need to work as hard to move. Eventually, astronauts’ bones and muscles break down if no precautions are taken.
The study researchers were from Australia and the UK. Svenja Schmidt, the lead author, said in the news release that omega-3 fatty acids “help protect against space radiation and increase the bone formation rate.”
Experimenting in the kitchen
Next, the researchers want to test how the drinks taste in gravity versus microgravity and their shelf-stability during space travel.
According to the news release, Volker Hessel, one of the team members, said, “being one small piece in the big puzzle of human space exploration and helping astronauts to stay healthy is a visionary privilege.”