Olive Oil May Have an Important Role in Diets of Astronauts

Scientists and an Italian chef work­ing together to design fla­vor­ful and nutri­tional diets for long-range space mis­sions believe olive oil will play a crit­i­cal role.

“Space alters fla­vor per­cep­tion,” Marta Del Bianco, a researcher at the Italian Space Agency (ASI), told Olive Oil Times. ​“Food fla­vored with olive oil might prove rel­e­vant for astro­nauts’ nutri­tion and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.”

According to chef Stefano Polato, even com­par­a­tively mod­est alti­tude gains can change how peo­ple per­ceive fla­vor. ​“As you get over 3,000 feet (910 meters), the taste of food starts to change,” he told Olive Oil Times.

Polato added that the lack of grav­ity means that aro­mas do not accom­pany taste as they do on Earth, mean­ing food might lose some of its organolep­tic appeals. However, adding olive oil may help pre­vent this. ​“Astronauts said they truly enjoyed olive oil,” he said.

“Astronauts in space tend to lose a lot of weight and, since the begin­ning of space explo­ration, space agen­cies have worked hard to com­bat such phe­nom­e­non,” Del Bianco added.

“The biggest obsta­cle is that the food was mostly dis­gust­ing,” she said. ​“Even after many years of progress, many astro­nauts con­tinue not to eat some of the foods avail­able. But eat­ing is cru­cial for their health dur­ing mis­sions.”

Del Bianco and Polato are work­ing with oth­ers on a research project backed by the European Space Agency (ESA) with the sup­port of ASI, the Italian olive oil pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion, Unaprol, the Italian Council for Research in Agriculture (CREA) and NASA.

“The whole idea relies on show­ing how extra vir­gin olive oil can play a key role in the func­tional nutri­tion of astro­nauts’ diet, given the sig­nif­i­cant need to sus­tain a healthy diet in space,” Nicola Di Noia, Unaprol’s gen­eral direc­tor, told Olive Oil Times.

Collaborating with the farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, Di Noia and Polato focused on pair­ing tra­di­tional astro­naut food with extra vir­gin olive oil brought by astro­nauts as their ​“bonus food.” Astronauts can bring a lim­ited amount of spe­cialty food to sup­ple­ment the stan­dard diet.

“The first thing to keep in mind is that dif­fer­ent extra vir­gin olive oil means dif­fer­ent fla­vors and dif­fer­ent impacts on serv­ings,” Polato said. The four extra vir­gin olive oils selected by astro­nauts as their bonus food were Coratina, Moraiolo, Itrana and Carolea mono­va­ri­etals.

“Pairing food and extra vir­gin olive oil is cru­cial,” Polato said. ​“Astronauts were given four lit­tle bot­tles of those extra vir­gin olive oils to add fla­vor to any food of their choice.”

Di Noia added that astro­nauts could detect dis­tinct fla­vors cre­ated by com­bin­ing extra vir­gin olive oil with dif­fer­ent types of food, such as rice with prawns, toma­toes and aspara­gus.

While olive oil has been used in the past by astro­nauts, this is the first time that a com­pre­hen­sive study on its use in space is being done.

Previously, astro­nauts brought 50-mil­li­liter bot­tles of extra vir­gin olive oil to the International Space Station dur­ing the Minerva mis­sion in July 2022.

One of the three bot­tles is sent back to Earth every six months for analy­sis. One has already been received and is cur­rently being stud­ied. Another is expected in July, and the third bot­tle should arrive by the end of the year.

Preliminary results on the first bot­tle show that minor alter­ations might have occurred, but those are unlikely to have impacted the health and fla­vor pro­file of the prod­uct.

“The sam­ples will allow us to mea­sure poten­tial dif­fer­ences and even­tual alter­ations to the con­tents emerg­ing over time,” Del Bianco said.

“Given olive oil’s nutri­tional qual­i­ties and fla­vors, should it show a strong resilience to the space envi­ron­ment, it could eas­ily be cho­sen to accom­pany astro­nauts in many other mis­sions,” includ­ing mis­sions to the moon or Mars, she added.

Del Bianco said any food des­tined for Mars would need to be sent a year before astro­nauts departed for Earth’s near­est neigh­bor, with these stud­ies serv­ing as a pre­lim­i­nary step to see how the food would keep.

Del Bianco expects the absence of grav­ity and cos­mic radi­a­tion to impact the com­po­si­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil dur­ing the 18-month jour­ney.

“Radiation has an oxi­dant effect,” she said. ​“Olive oil has antiox­i­dants, which means it is very sen­si­tive to oxi­dant activ­ity.”

The researchers also plan to send unfil­tered olive oil to space to see how the sus­pended water drops behave.