Astronauts on the International Space Station tend to like spicy foods and top other foods with things like Tabasco or shrimp cocktail sauce with horseradish. “Anecdotal reports say that food in space is less flavorful, so this is a way of compensating for that,” said Grace Roake, a food scientist at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Roque and his team conducted a study to dig into these anecdotal reports and test whether our perception of taste really does change in an environment like the ISS — likely yes, but only for some tastes.
Enjoy with all five senses
“There are many environmental factors that influence taste perception, ranging from the size of the space, to the color and intensity of lighting, the volume and type of sound, ambient odors, and even the size and shape of tableware. Many other studies have addressed each of these factors in some way,” Roque says.
So her team decided to recreate the ISS environment in VR to solve the mystery of the ISS’s bland food: “An environment like the ISS is difficult to recreate, so we looked for digital solutions to mimic the ISS atmosphere. [to be] “This is a huge issue for people who live and work in these areas,” says Julia Lo, a nutrition and food technologist at RMIT University and co-author of the study.
Once the VR version of the ISS was complete, the team had 54 participants smell vanilla, almond, and lemon. The first test took place in a regular room, and the second involved donning VR goggles and running a simulated ISS environment, complete with bleak, cluttered spaces, sounds found on the real ISS, and objects floating around in microgravity.
Participants said the lemon tasted the same in both rounds; almond and vanilla, on the other hand, seemed stronger when participants were in the VR environment. This is the opposite of what would be expected given astronauts’ eating habits, but it’s instructive. “The bottom line is that we may perceive scents differently in a space-like environment, but we’re selective about which types of scents. We don’t fully understand why this is, but knowing there are differences is a first step to learning more,” Roque said.
Roque and her colleagues then got out their mass spectrometers and took a closer look at the composition of the flavors they tested.
Space-Ready Materials
The lemon flavor used in Roque’s team’s tests consisted of cotton balls coated with lemon essential oil, which were then placed in a sealed container until subjects were able to smell it. The vapor released from the container contained several volatile chemicals, including monoterpene alcohols such as limonene, camphene, 3-carene, linalool, and carveol.
The almond flavor contained similar chemicals but with one notable difference: The almond and vanilla flavors contained benzaldehyde, while the lemon did not. “Benzaldehyde naturally gives off a sweet scent, but the lemon scent doesn’t contain benzaldehyde, so it has a more fruity, citrus scent. We suspect that the sweet character of the scent leads to a stronger perception.” [simulated] “Space,” Loke said.
