taste still on my lips, right or wrong

So it turns out that getting food for our space travelers of the future is only part of the problem. You have them pick their favorite meals… grow a fresh crop of cowpeas or strawberries or whatever… and then they get up to space and they don’t like their favorite food anymore, or something they previously disliked becomes delicious. Then you’ve got astronauts living on Mars and depressed because they hate all their food.

Okay, it sounds crazy. But the taste thing actually happens, and no one’s sure exactly why.

One possible explanation is nasal congestion. In microgravity, fluid in the body is redistributed to the upper part of the body, and the resulting fluid buildup can produce an effect kind of like having a head cold. As we all know, a bad cold can seriously interfere with your sense of taste, since smell makes up a significant part of your taste experience.

Astronaut Scott Parazynski told Scientific American (article also linked above) that while he believed in the nasal congestion explanation, the smells in the shuttle were also “distracting.” On the other hand, in the same article astronaut Clayton Andrews reported altered taste preferences though he was only congested part of the time.

Another possibility is that the food just gets boring after having to eat the exact same meal every eight days.

Regardless of why it happens, many astronauts experience a flavor dilemma in space. So spicy stuff is popular; for example, read this report from Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson about how important condiments are to her crew (motto: “It’s all about the sauce”). In 2002, Whitson (who loves shrimp on Earth but can’t stand it in space, with the reverse true for peanut butter) joked with the shuttle Atlantis that she “wasn’t opening the hatch unless they had salsa.” (They had salsa.)

With the possibility of touristy-type spaceflight edging ever nearer (at least for wealthy people), people are on top of preparing items for space consumption. Items like beer.

Yes, 4-Pines Brewing Co in Australia has produced a beer specially created for consumption in the taste-challenged non-atmosphere of space. It has a lower carbonation factor (since microgravity doesn’t allow the CO2 bubbles to be freed by burping like they can be on Earth) and, allegedly, stronger flavor for “astronauts’ less-than-refined palates.”

I couldn’t find any support for the idea reported in many of the space beer articles that taste buds are “numbed” by spaceflight or for the claim that taste loss is due to the tongue swelling (as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald), so if you turn up anything please share in the comments.

PS: On the moon, moon dust tastes and smells like gunpowder. On Earth, it smells like nothing (presumably they weren’t allowed to ingest the returned moon dust samples).