MEDIET EXPERIMENT 2/2

http://www.isspace.com
24th April 2004, during the DELTA Mission, on the International Space Station (ISS), two Russian cosmonauts - Alexander Kaleri and Gennadi Padalka - performed the Mediet (Mediterranean Diet) Experiment, demonstrating the possibility to use "Mediet food system" on board the ISS and beyond.
Daniele Bedini, space designer and president of the design firm "IS_in and out space_srl", was the General manager of the experiment.
The Bedini's team designed a revolutionary new food preservation technique, based on exposing foodstuffs to very high pressure, an innovative packaging system and an ergonomic food-tray.
Bedini describes MEDIET as follows:
"The Mediet food system, composed by top quality Mediterranean, Italian products, served to demonstrate that the 'food' in Space can be fresh, delicious and psychologically accepted.
Mediet was an example of how various genuine international food menus can be delivered to Space in order to increase the variety of this System. The entire system consisted in an ergonomic tray, made of aluminum, with five items of Mediterranean food from Italy: dried tomatoes, mature cheese, piadina bread (special Italian white bread), peaches and chocolate.
The tray served as a prototype of a product, which could be used in extreme environments on Earth, as well as during traveling, or simply when time for cooking, or a table to sit behind, are not available. The tray was also a demonstration about the possibility to transfer ideas, technologies and life-styles into terrestrial products; in fact Bedini and "IS" team designed a derived-tray for COOP Italia, to be sold inside its stores.
The experiment demonstrated also the use of the Mediet food system on board ISS and of course onboard the future Space Hotels, due to its variety, quality and easy-to-eat components!
The food successfully passed all mandatory tests first for use on Earth and then special microbiological analyses, required to be delivered to the International Space Station.
The food was individually packaged for convenient consumption in special space flight qualified transparent plastic bags, and in meal-size portions.
It was processed using a High Pressure Processing (4000-6000 atu) technology, which is able to eliminate enzymes and bacteria without altering the properties of fresh food. The new preservation technique proved that it is possible to keep food tasting fresh after many months and preserving the fragile nutrients that get damaged by techniques such as pasteurisation.
This new preservation method provides reliable long-term storage at room temperature, and at the same time allows the food to retain nutritional values, taste, texture and colour and save energy.
The food inside the bags was either pre-cut into a bite-size pieces (cheese, bread and chocolate), or has such a viscosity that it remains intact in weightlessness: while the cosmonaut picks up a piece with a fork, the rest of the bag content remains in place (tomatoes in oil and peaches in jelly). The cosmonaut cuts open the bag with scissors, and uses a fork to take pieces out of the bag.
During the experiment, one cosmonaut ate and evaluated the quality of the food, considering such parameters as odour, flavour, texture, colour, and overall appearance.
The second cosmonaut maked the video showed here".

The Mediet experiment was done within the framework of the European Space Agency commercialization programe of the International Space Station under a contract between ESA and Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation. Daniele Bedini was MEDIET responsible (while working for Univeristy of Florence Consortium and IS) under a contract of COOP Italia, the experiment sponsor.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ISS
• Space Food
• Space Station
• Mediterranean Diet
• Cosmonaut
• Space Hotel
• Space Tourism
• Design
• Space Design
• Space Experiment
• Experiment
• Astronaut
• Russian

[Crazy21Grl]

Nice videos. NOW I want some Mediet.

[Crazy21Grl]

LOL. Nom nom nom. Green GIant!!