Sherri: Good afternoon to all of you out there in worldwide Web land. Welcome to the Johnson Space Center. We are broadcasting live here in Houston, Texas. My name is Sherri Jurls, and I will be your host today and on behalf of the Distance Learning Outpost and Ames NASA Quest Program, we are very happy to bring you this Webcast spotlighting a very special guest with us today.

Her name is Janis Davis-Street. She is a nutritionist out here at Johnson Space Center, and she works in the Life Sciences Department.

And you grew up in Georgetown, Guyana, which is a very interesting background, and you went to college in Ontario, Canada, and you got your graduate school degree in Alberta, Canada. If you would, Janis, would you take a few minutes and share with us your background and how you came to work here at Johnson Space Center.

Janis: Sure. Thanks, Sherry. I came to the United States in 1987 from Canada after completing my Master's degree in nutrition. I've always had an interest in the way that nutrition and nutrients affect the human body. And I was, at that time, thinking of pursuing a doctorate degree in nutrition, and wanted to get some real experience, so I worked in a Medical Center for about three years, where I learned to do a variety of nutritional tests, given a very wide understanding of nutrition and how it relates to human body, and I responded to an ad in the Houston Chronicle.

It was one of those things that I just happen to be looking through the newspaper and there was an ad for a position at NASA and I came and had an interview. And ten years later, going on eleven, I'm still here doing lots of very exciting things and doing lots of space nutrition research and just enjoying investigating the effects of space flight on the human body, and looking at the ways that nutrition can maybe useful in keeping astronauts healthy.

Sherri: Wonderful. Well, in honor of Women's History Month, we are very glad to have you joining us and sharing all of this wonderful information with all of us today. And as a reminder to all of you out there in worldwide Web land, do submit your questions. Janis is going to be with us for an hour today.

She is here to answer all of our questions that we have for her. Now, under normal circumstances, we do use the chat room so we don't have to use e-mail. But due to technical difficulties today, we are having to use a little bit different approach than we do normally for this type of Webcast. You can submit your questions instead of in the chat room to quested@hotmail.com, and those questions will come right in to us here on our laptop computer so Janis can answer those for you, so do seize the opportunity.

She's here with us today and get those questions answered that have been burning on your minds about space nutrition and all other nutrition in general, but I believe that you've got a presentation that you would like to share with us.

Janis: Yes. I'd like to speak with you briefly on some different aspects of space nutrition.

I have an outline here that kind of tells you what I'm going to be talking about. I'd like to first briefly look at the different kinds of space food systems, kind of showing you how nutrition has evolved over the years in the United States space program.

I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how we assess nutritional status in space flight, talk with you about some information that's very exciting to us. We are doing some bone research right now, and I'd like to share some of what we're getting ready to do in the year 2002. And then, finally, end up with the reason all of this is important, not only for exploring space,

but also to give you some idea, some of the benefits to the Earth community of the work that we are planning to do.

If we look at the space food systems from as early as Mercury and Gemini and Apollo, nutrition has been part of the space program. While on those early missions, whether or not the astronauts ate a healthy diet for those short missions, it wasn't as critical.

As we go to the longer missions, nutrition becomes even more important. Even the shuttle missions which are typically weeks to maybe as much as three months, we don't worry as much about nutrition up to 30 days, but once we get beyond that point, it becomes even more critical. We often say that shuttle flight is like a camping trip. If you don't eat perfectly during that time, it's not a showstopper.

But as you go to the International Space Station, these are some of the issues we look at. The nutrient content of the foods, whether or not the foods provide the adequate amounts of nutrients, storage characteristics. The food will need to be able to be stored in small spaces. Many of the foods are dehydrated so they take up less space and weigh less when they leave our shores. Shelf life. The foods need to be able to last a long time. Preparation. They need to be easy to prepare. Most importantly, they need to be eaten. Because it doesn't matter. Food is not worth anything in terms of nutrition unless it's eaten, and so palatability becomes very critical. And then trash.

We need to have foods packed in packages that don't generate too much trash.

The next thing, if we look at what the astronauts' environment looks like when they're in orbit We can see in this picture here is. Linda Godwin getting ready to unpack some foods from a food locker, and you can see things are probably quite a little bit busier than your home kitchen, but the astronauts are still able to live and work in these environments.

This is a close-up of a food tray and, to the bottom left, you can see what looks like green beans and mushrooms. To the top right, there's a drink bag. Top left corner, there is some M&Ms, and we've got, most important, utensils for the crew. I've been told that scissors are probably the most important utensil because they need those to open up the packages. Anything on there is probably. I don't know if you can see, but most of the items are Velcroed so that the astronauts can keep hold of their food items while in orbit.

Here's another picture of [inaudible], one of the astronauts preparing the meal for his crew. I don't know if you can see the large rectangular blue items are the food trays, and those are up on the wall, and you can see the different food items attached to them there.

As you can see, mealtime can be a very important time for the crew. And we always say that nutrition is not only important for providing nutrients, but also for the psychological benefits that nutrition provides, and mealtime and be able to sit together as a group and eat. Those are all very important [factors] of nutrition.

Next, I want to talk about how do we assess nutritional status during space flight? Now, on the ground, we will ask the astronauts to keep a log of what they've eaten for a few days. On orbit, we do such things a little differently. In this picture, we have Hoot Gibson scanning a food item, and you can see, I have in my hand a close-up.

You can see a close-up of what that barcode reader looks like. This is the old age barcode reader. We've gotten one that's a little newer, and I'll show you that shortly. And what the astronauts can do with the barcode reader like this is to scan the food items. Each food item contains a UPC label and the crew is able to scan their food items and we can get a log of what they've eaten.

Here, we can see [Raye Sutton] doing just that. She has scanned her food item in her left hand, and in her right hand, she's probably entering the kinds of foods that she's eaten. She's probably entering the information about it, whether or not she's eaten some or all of it, and that information is time and date scanned and when that barcode reader comes back down to the Earth, we can get a complete log of what she's eaten. What's especially interesting when we do this kind of work, we call this research quality nutritional assessment.

And that is, we like to get a totally accurate ID of everything that the astronauts have eaten. We get to go through the trash when the crew comes back. We dress up in little bunny suits, and we go through sometimes as much as 16-day old trash and we then are able to match up what the astronauts have said they've eaten with what they've scanned, and we have had really great success in the kind of data that we have obtained like that, in that method.

This is a picture of the new version of the barcode reader. As you can see, it's a little sleeker. It's smaller. They're using what they're calling smart barcodes where, based on what's on the barcode, it cues the barcode user what kind of sample it is.

We use these barcodes to not only monitor the food that the astronauts eat but also the samples that the astronauts collect. In some of our experiments, we're interested not only in what goes into the astronaut, but also what comes out of them. Because of that, we monitor their blood.

We monitor their saliva, sometimes their fecal samples, and on orbit, we are able to collect the urine and saliva and blood samples and the astronauts are able to scan those samples, so that we have a good idea of when those samples were collected.

In terms of nutritional status assessment, what we're able to do right now with long duration crew members, that is the astronauts who are on board the International Space Station, we do a comprehensive nutritional status assessment protocol. This protocol is a medical requirement. That means every U.S. astronaut that goes on the International Space Station, we're able to obtain these data from those crewmembers. The objective of these tests are to monitor crew nutritional status.

To get an idea of what they normally are like before space flight and then, when they return. And we get individual data from the crew members that we can, together, look at all the data from all the long duration astronauts and get a very good idea of what goes on with the body during space flight.

And, more importantly, have the ability to do rehabilitation once the crew comes back. This gives you an overview of how comprehensive the nutritional assessment is. On the left is a list of all the tests. Before the astronaut goes out, we do a dietary assessment questionnaire, where we find out what their usual intake is like. And then, while they're on orbit, we do a food frequency questionnaire which is shown on the left. It's on a laptop. It's flown on the International Space Station. It takes about ten to fifteen minutes. It gives us the kind of data where we can get a general idea of how many calories, how much protein, how much water, how much calcium, iron and sodium the astronauts are consuming while they are on those International Space Station flights.

Sherri: Can you talk a little bit about some of these tests, because some of our viewers may not be able to easily read that list.

Janis: In addition to the questionnaires, we have body weight and body composition measurements. We do those on the ground. On the ground, we get a preflight body weight at six months, and then a month before flight. During the mission, we're able to get body mass measurements by an instrument called the body mass measuring device, which gives us body mass measurements on orbit. We're able to relate that body mass data with the food intake data that we're obtaining.

The other kinds of tests that we get are things like protein status. We look at different complements for the blood that give us an indication of the protein status, their vitamin status, iron status, antioxidant status. That's very important. The crew members are exposed to increased levels of radiation while in orbit, and we're very interested to see what happens to their antioxidant status, and, in the future, may be able to come up with some nutritional content measures to maybe assist in decreasing some of the negative affects.

We also look at routine blood chemistry. We look at things like vitamin and mineral status. We investigate renal stone risk. With some of the bone loss, what occurs during space flight, there's a lot of calcium that gets shed into the urine from the blood, and this increases the astronauts' risk of renal stones.

This is really critical because the risk increases with the duration of the mission. And so, for the long duration astronauts, it's really very important for us to know what their renal stone risk is before they go up and be sure that we minimize that risk it as much as we can.

The nice thing about renal stone risk is that there's a simple countermeasure treatment for that. We encourage the astronauts to drink lots of fluid. The recommendation is at least two liters of water or a fluid while they're in orbit and that has been shown to decrease the risk of renal stones.

And then, finally, we're interested in bone health. We do [DEXA], which is a special x-ray for looking at bone mass, and we look at several biochemical indices in the blood of bone health.

Well, as we look to segue from our nutritional status assessment into our research activities, there are four different risks that have been identified as being high probability and high impact for going to Mars, for those exploration missions of the future. And those four, in no particular order, are bone loss, radiation effects, psychological issues, and trauma.

The one that we are particularly interested in, other than the psychological affects of nutrition and the radiation affects of space flight, is bone loss. That is something that we are very interested in.

This is probably a little hard to read, but let me kind of walk you through this slide. On the left axis of this graph, this is bone mass. On the bottom axis is age, and that top line is showing you that as you get older, your bone mass increases. At around the age of 20, we meet our full potential, and you can see that around the age of 10 to 12, you can see where that line sharply increases. And that's where you want to encourage young people, especially young girls, to have adequate calcium intake, to get lots of exercise, because those are factors that help you to reach your growth potential.

Now, at the top part of that graph, you can see that when you reach the age of 40, 50, your bone mass starts decreasing as a natural part of aging due to some of the endocrine changes. The little dashed line below shows you what happens if you don't have enough calcium in your diet, if you don't get enough exercise, all the things that increase your risk of fracture and so you never reach that full potential.

One of the things we suggest that happens with space flight, based on the data we've obtained so far, is that during space flight, we have that little notch at the top there, where it says. You'll see that there's a decrease in the bone mass, at the top of that graph. And what happens is that the astronauts,

right there will decrease their bone mass at that point of time. And that's in a one year mission based on the data we've gotten so far.

What we suggest is that in a three year mission, we don't know whether that bone mass loss is going to increase even further and put the astronaut into the risk of getting a fracture. And for that reason, being able to get a handle on what causes the bone loss in space flight is a very big area of research for us, and a concern that NASA has in terms of keeping our astronauts healthy, as we plan for those longer missions.

And as I said, for those long missions, the major thing is bone loss, fracture risk, making sure that we don't put them in a state where the bone loss is so great that they have increased risk of fracture. And then, again, the loss of bone causes the calcium to leach into the urine, where there's an increased risk of kidney stones.

This is a cartoon that kind of shows what happens in your bone. You always like to say that bones are dynamic tissue. It's not static. On the left side, we see the caveman breaking the bone. On the right side, we see the caveman building the bone. Both of these factors occur continually in our bodies. Bone is constantly being remodeled.

We are able to measure in the urine and in serum in blood the different factors on both sides of that cartoon. We can measure markers that indicate bone formation or we can measure markers that indicate bone breakdown, or bone absorption, and the component in the middle are the things that control all those processes. So, we are able to go and look in the urine and in the saliva and in the blood and get an idea of what's happening with bone at the biochemical level.

Now, in terms of calcium regulation, calcium, as you know, is the major mineral in bone. What happens during space flight is that Vitamin D stores are decreased during space flight, and Vitamin D affects the hormonal makeup of the body and calcium absorption is also decreased.

During space flight, what happens is that bone resorption or breakdown is increased and bone formation is either decreased or unchanged during space flight.

Then we tried to come up with what are the treatments, what can we do to fix some of this bone loss. And what we have seen so far is that it's going to probably be a three-factor approach. Nutrition is going to be very important, although it's not going to be a panacea. It's not going to be the fix it. But adequate calcium, Vitamin D, and nutrients like Vitamin K, protein, all of those will be very important in creating healthy bones.

The other factors that will be important will be exercise.

And in this slide, we can see one of the cosmonauts. He is. You may not be able to see where. His hands are attached to a piece of equipment which is a resistive exercise piece of equipment. And we found that resistive exercise does a lot better job of maintaining bone in ground studies than do all the forms of exercise, like aerobic exercise. And then the third part of those treatments is going to be pharmacological agents.

We've been trying out things like Phosomax. Phosomax is the [phosfomate] that's being used to treat osteoporosis, and we're finding in ground studies that these treatments can be very effective in reducing bone loss in ground-based models of space flight. And the most likely approach to treating loss of bone of space flight for both future missions and for the ones on International Space Station would include making sure the astronauts have enough nutrition, make sure that they have enough minerals, vitamins, etc., and making sure that their exercise protocols include resistive, as well as aerobic exercise.

And then lastly but not least, to make sure that if any drug therapies are needed, that those would included. In terms of what we are doing right now, we are planning for SDS-107 where we will be looking at the movement of calcium in the body. We can monitor dietary intake of calcium. We use tracers, tracer methodologies to track the calcium through the body. We give label tracers. These are none radioactive stable isotopes of calcium.

And then we're able to measure those isotopes in blood, urine, saliva, and in feces, and we're able to track whether calcium is being broken down from bone, whether it's moving in and out of the gut, whether it's being put back into the bone, whether it's bone formation. It's a very sophisticated method that allows us to get a very good look at what's happening to the body in terms of calcium and bone health, and this is going to be something that we're going to be planning to do on SDS 107.

Here's a list of the objectives, and I'll read those to you. Kind of just summarize them real briefly. We want to find out what happens in the early days of space flight to calcium absorption, calcium kinetics, just the movement of calcium in the body.

And also what happens to bone calcium status.

We also want to know what the initial impact is going to be on those biochemical markets. And, finally, we want to measure the changes that occur during the recovery period. After the two-week mission, what's going to happen at the biochemical level. Because what we're seeing is that while some of the body mass changes, some of the bone mass changes that occur during space flight take months to occur. The biochemical changes actually occur very quickly, and we've not had the opportunity before this mission to look at some of those early changes, so this is going to be a very exciting time for us.

Where are we with SDS 107? We are scheduled to launch July 11th, 2002. I think we're now at L minus 100 and something days. We're not counting. We're just a little excited.

The crew has been training for a while now. It's really pretty incredible. Lots of time our crew members are not medical folks, but they are able to do these procedures with great professionalism. They will be injecting each other with tracers.

They will be collecting samples from each other, and they typically do an excellent job in getting the data for us. And our first baseline data collection session, which is the first time we'll be collecting samples for this protocol is coming up in May, and it's looking awfully close and we're awfully excited to get going with this.

What are Earth benefits? Why do we do all this space research stuff? I get asked that question a lot when I go talk to schools. The research is important. Learning more about what happens to the body during space flight is important for keeping astronauts healthy, for their future exploration missions.

But it also provides the research community here on Earth with lots of information that they can use. Some of the techniques that we have developed in terms of using smaller amounts of tracers have been very useful to our colleagues on Earth. We've done things like discovered or created patented urine preservatives that would allow urine samples to be collected and stored at room temperature.

There would be special preservatives that can be used in rural areas. You know, when they need to collect urine samples, you would have to put them in dry ice. So there are just a few areas where research can be beneficial for the Earth community.

Then, again, lots of the things that we learn in terms of bone health literally hope be very beneficial for people on Earth with osteoporosis, as well as people with paralytic conditions. The loss of the [inaudible] are very similar to the things that we see in space flight, and so we hope that some of what we find from our research experiments will be beneficial to our colleagues on Earth, as well.

Countermeasures. The treatments that we can identify for space in [use] bone loss or hopefully to help treat osteoporosis, as I mentioned. And then in terms of some of the technology that we have either [devised] that we can share those with scientists on Earth.

And then, last, but not least, for the opportunity to do education outreach. That's something that we feel is very important. If we can inspire at least one child to decide to go into the field of science, I think we feel very satisfied by that. And so, we try to share as much of what we do with the schools, with universities, with people around the community. And so those are just four areas of what we feel we can share that with people here on Earth.

Some of the specific areas of education outreach are, obviously, as you can imagine, in science, in math education. Lots of what we end up doing is very related to science and math, as well as providing nutrition information to schools, to the general public. We try to use space as an interesting avenue of bringing these matters into the home and into the classroom.

And then, some of the specific education outreach activities we've had, one of them is our Website. It's probably a little difficult to read, but we're part of the www.JSC.NASA.gov Web link. If you can get to the nutrition lab and see the new things that we are doing right now and what's new in terms of what nutrition science and science in general at NASA.

We also do a lot of classroom presentations. We have student interns who come and work for weeks and months with us.

We do a lot of Webcasts like this one, and we try to do some e-mail exchange with kids all over the world, as well as here in the Houston area. And then we try to go to different conferences and have exhibits, career nights, and talk with people to let them know the kinds of things we're doing.

National Engineers which is something we support. Usually we take that opportunity to go out there and encourage kids to get involved in science careers, engineering careers. We try to take all those opportunities to share the work we do and, hopefully, with that, inspire kids to want to be scientists.

And then we also have a number of brochures and reprints that we provide to folks who turn those requests in and give them that information about the kinds of work that we are doing.

One of our projects that we've been working is a space nutrition newsletter. We're onto SQ5, and we're using this to track along with SDS 107. And what we've been doing with this is bringing [neat, fun] information about space and nutrition. We give little things like bone food facts, telling them the great things that nutrition can do for their bones, and there's a word of the month, every month, where we give them a word and challenge them to figure out what it means.

This is your crossword or word, some neat activity to draw the kids in, and we hope through this newsletter to share with them all the work we're doing for SDS 107.

As well as give them a little fun look at nutrition and see how it applies not only to those astronauts way orbiting up there, not only to their parents, but also to themselves, to try to stress how good nutrition is important everywhere, not only on orbit but also right here on Earth.

And then, finally, I'd like to show you the human body. There are so many systems that are affected by space flight, and every one of these you can imagine probably has a nutritional link. Taste and odor sensitivities affected by nutrition. There are psychological factors that are affected by nutritional related nutrition. Muscle loss is related to nutrition, but the one that we have been mostly focusing on is bone loss. And it has been the area of research that we have had a lot of our energy directed to. And as we progress into the future, we will be looking at other systems that bone loss remains a very critical factor in limiting space flights to Mars or to the Moon again. And so, once we can understand what goes on with space flight on the human skeleton.

We can look forward to future where we will be going to those distant planets and worrying about bone loss will not be one of those risks that is still there if we can figure out how to treat and how to fix the bone loss of space flight.

Sherri: Okay. Great. Well, Janis, thanks so much for that overview. Our chat room is just overflowing with questions.

Sherri: So, let's go ahead and start taking some of those questions. The first one comes in from Tammy.

And Tammy wants to know what makes the calcium in bones not work right in space?

Janis: Well, the theory is that once the skeleton does not have to bear weight that it senses that as not needing as much bone. And so because our body is such a miraculous creation, it automatically knows that it doesn't feel as if it needs to deal with all of this calcium, so it's trying to get rid of some of that calcium. It really is an adaptive response, and while the bones function in terms of movement quite well, there's just calcium loss from them, and the problem with that is that if there's too much calcium loss, there's not only the problem of renal stone risk, but there's also the problem of making the bones weaker.

And what I have here is a picture of what the bone looks like. On the one side, you have here healthy bones. Then we have what we call osteoporotic bone. And in this example of the bone, you can see how structurally the osteoporotic bone has lost some of its calcium, has lost some of its integrity. What that does is eventually it runs the risk of making that bone weaker and increases the risk of fracture.

Now, this is an example of what happens on the ground with osteoporosis, with aging. What happens during space flight is a similar kind of procedure. We have not had an instance where the astronauts have actually broken their bones.

But we do know that the bone loss does increase their risk of making that bone loss happen, and that increases that risk of a fracture, and that's what we're trying to avoid happening.

Sherri: Great. Well, Jerry is a sixth grade student and he wants to know who was your greatest inspiration?

Janis: I would have to say, I'd have to say my mother. My mother was a very smart woman, born in a time where I believe that a woman's intellect was not as valued as it is now. And throughout my life, she always encouraged all of us -- there's three girls in my family -- and she always encouraged all of us that there was no door that we could not try to open, that there was no career that we could not try to pursue. And I'd have to say that that was probably the most inspirational person in my life would have to be my mother.

Sherri: Great. Well, many of us out there may not know that it's National Nutrition Month, but that ties in with Frankie's question. He wants to know if the astronauts have to eat food that they don't like in order to stay healthy in space?

Janis: What is really kind of neat with that. That's a good question. The astronauts actually get to select their food before they go up into space flight. They do taste panels where they're able to select various items from the shuttle food menu and they actually are able to have a little bit of fun during space flight. If you can have that montage, that will probably give you a good idea of how much fun the astronauts can have while they're in orbit.

Janis: As you can see from that clip, astronauts actually have a lot of fun in space flight with their food, and they actually eat some of it, too. And, as you could tell from that clip, there were some clips where they were actually tasting some of the food items

Janis on screen

And they're typically able to select the foods that they like, because, if you can imagine. I mean, stuck out in space for months at a time, and the food if you hate it, so it's very important that the astronauts select food that they will eat and that they enjoy so that they can stay on orbit.

Sherri: Well, I don't think the astronauts listen to their parents when they say don't play with your food.

Janis: That's right.

Sherri: All right. Well, our next question comes from Terry, who is a tenth grade student, and Terry says, why did you leave Guyana and do you ever go home to visit?

Janis: Well, that's a good question. In my family, when you turned age to go to college, you had two choices. You either went to England to study or you went to Canada. I'm the third child. The first two, one went to England, the next went to Canada. My older sister went to Canada and I chose to go to Canada to study. It's just a right of passage. All universities in Guyana are not as high caliber as they are overseas, and so my father offered us that opportunity. And so I left Guyana in 1981 and went off to Canada to study nutrition.

In terms of whether I go home, I try to go home about every three years. In fact, I went home last year to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary, and that was a very special time to be back home. But I do miss it, because you know, there's no place like home, but my kids are American, my husband is an American, and I enjoy living and working in the United States.

Sherri: Well, I remember reading in your bio that you have a little piece of your heart left in your hometown.

Janis: Absolutely.

Sherri: That's very sweet. Okay. Our next question comes from Cassandra who is an eighth grade student here in Texas, and she wants to know, do you ever get to work with the astronauts directly?

Janis: Yes, I actually do, and that's probably one of the most fun parts of my job. With the experiments that we are trying to do in SDS-107, I will be involved in some of the baseline data collection with the International Space Station crew. We are able to meet with them and participate in that data collection. So, yes, we do get a lot of opportunity to go directly to the astronauts, and I always find that a fascinating time, because I'm always very impressed by these people who are so brave and adventurous to want to explore that final frontier. So, that's usually a lot of fun to work directly with the astronauts.

Sherri: Well, for those of you just joining us, we are broadcasting live from Johnson Space Center NASA, here in Houston, Texas, in support of Women's History Month.

And we have a very special guest with us today, Janis Davis-Street, who is a nutritionist here at Johnson Space Center, and we are taking your questions from the e-mails that we are receiving from you. You can submit those questions at quested@hotmail.com. We're having some technical difficulties with the chat room, so we're asking you to please use the e-mail way of submitting your questions today and Janis is here answering those questions. And without further ado, I'm going to move on to the next question from Evelyn.

And Evelyn writes in, who is your all-time favorite famous woman and why?

Janis: My all time favorite woman? Famous woman? I'd have to say Mother Teresa. I think she wins my vote, primarily because of her selflessness and her dedication to helping other people. I think people that are in the health professions in nutrition and medicine, a lot of us get into that field because we want to help other people. And Mother Teresa by her life, she exemplified the ultimate in helping others. She spent her entire life helping those less fortunate, and I'd have to say she was my favorite, famous woman.

Sherri: I think I would agree with you there. Okay. Davis writes in, a tenth grade student, and Davis wants to know, for the most part, I know that everyone needs about the same things, but sometimes, do different people need different nutritional requirements?

Janis: That's actually a good question. Our nutritional requirements are based on our size, for things like calories. Bigger people need more calories, and so for the crew and for people on Earth, the amount of nutrition that you need, or the amount of calories that you need, is determined by your age, your weight, your height, by your level of activity. And likewise, the astronauts, the amount of calories that each astronaut needs is determined by his or her age or weight. Those factors affect the nutritional needs.

There are some other nutrients that are the same for men or women or regardless of size. Some of the micro-nutrients are the vitamins and minerals. Those are the same for different crew members. But in terms of our Earth-based population, most of the nutrient needs are different for people who are growing, people who are pregnant and lactating. Those individuals typically have a higher nutritional requirement than people who are not in those conditions.

Sherri: Well, speaking of vitamins and minerals, Greg is a tenth grade student and wants to know, do the astronauts take vitamin supplements?

Janis: At present, the scientists here at NASA, we recommend supplements for the long-duration crew members for Vitamin D. That's the only supplement that we, from our research, have identified a need for. However, the astronauts are free to take, you know, if they take them, you should take a multi-vitamin. That's usually a personal decision between the astronaut and his flight surgeon, and, they typically will take some of those. But it varies with each individual as much as it does amongst Earth-based populations.

Sherri: All right. Deidre is from Alberta, and Deidre writes in, which schools did you attend in Canada?

Janis: For my undergraduate degree, I attended the University of [inaudible] which is in Ontario. There's a big agricultural college there, as well as a veterinary college, and I am lucky enough to be taught physiology by a Professor of the Vet school, and he was wonderful. And then for my Masters, I went to the University of Alberta. I received school in Edmonton. I lived in Edmonton for about three years and survived the cold winters, enjoyed every minute of this.

Sherri: Well, Jeremy writes in with a great question. He's a twelfth grade student, and he says, is calcium and bone loss the main thing that nutritionists and scientists are looking at in microgravity right now? Isn't there anything else perplexing or problematic?

Janis: Great question. Right now, calcium and bone loss has been occupying a lot of our time. One of the reasons is, it's one of those high risk areas. NASA's identified items that they consider high risk and high probability and bone loss is high on that list.

There's other areas that our group has been looking at. Things like antioxidant status, things like general nutritional status. These are the other areas that we do have an interest in, although bone and calcium has been the predominant emphasis for us.

There are other scientists here at NASA are looking at things like cardiovascular changes in space, by looking at muscle loss during space flight, [neurovestibular] changes, so there are a lot of other areas that the other scientists in the community at the Johnson Space Center is investigating. But for now, bone is probably our biggest area, but we are always on the lookout for other systems that are affected by nutrition, and those are on our list of things to do.

Sherri: Okay. So, you actually showed us earlier some of the samples of food that the astronauts eat and Troy wants to know if you have ever tasted any of those samples?

Janis: Actually, I have. Some of the food items, here I have some macaroni and cheese.

It may not look too great, but you can see there's actually real macaroni in there. And this is a dehydrated food item. Once it is rehydrated, this actually tastes pretty good. I've tasted the macaroni and cheese and it was just cheesy enough for me.

And the items like this, there's spaghetti with meat sauce, I've tasted that one, as well. We've made lots of other different kinds of food items.

There's the sausage patty, which I'm told tastes just like the sausage patty you might have for your breakfast.

And then there's things that you would probably recognize, like chocolate pudding.

And the all time favorite for lots of people, the M&Ms. And, of course, I've tasted M&Ms, but I've also tasted some of the other dehydrated food items. The food labs will typically, before they offer the food to the crew, will often do taste testing. And we typically will volunteer to be tasters for the foods labs. And we will rate foods in terms of their taste, texture, things like smell, different kinds of factors related to food. And the foods pretty good and the scientists who are in the food science group work very hard to come up with different foods with incorporating a variety of food items for the crews to try out and for us to taste and for the crew to have the opportunity to use on station as well as in [shadow].

Sherri: Well, part of another question that we received was, do the astronauts get to taste their food before they choose their menu and go up into space or are they just stuck with whatever they get?

Janis: No. Taste testing is a very important part of selecting the menu for the crew, and there are usually a time for them to meet with the dietician to come up with food selection that not only meets their tastes but also meets their nutritional requirements.

Sherri: Okay. Great. Well, Yolanda wants to know what you think that you'll be doing five to ten years from now?

Janis: Well, I hope I'm still having the opportunity just to talk with these young people and the public at large about the kind of work that nutritionists can be doing. I probably will be right here at the Johnson Space Center in five to ten years, learning more about what the effects of space life on the body are and learning more about the ways that we can treat those effects. So, I probably see myself in five to ten years being here.

Sherri: Okay. Derek, thanks for writing in your question. You want to know how many years did Janis have to go to school to become a nutritionist?

Janis: Well, to become a nutritionist, you need to have at least a bachelor's degree, and I did four years to obtain my B.S. in Nutrition. And then I wanted to have an idea of what some of the applications of that on the graduate work were I did a Master's degree in nutrition. So for my part, I had six years of education and I continue to learn. They say that when you stop learning, you might as well be dead, so I continue to learn more about nutrition. There are so many new things that are happening with nutrition, so beyond my formal education of six years, I continue to try to read and keep up with the latest happenings in terms of nutrition.

Nutritionists come in probably at least two flavors. There are those of us who have a dietetics background. We work with a research dietician in our group who does an excellent job of providing nutritional counseling for the crews and their families, as well as doing a lot of the dietary assessment that is a great complement to the biochemical type work we do.

And then, there's the other side of nutrition, where we have folks who are more involved in analyses of body fluids, looking at biochemical and physiological effects of nutrition. And what's neat about our group is that those two hats come together, and we're able to provide a very comprehensive look at nutrition and nutritional science as part of the space program.

Sherri: All right. Marissa, you write in and want to know, Janis, what is your favorite part of the job?

Janis: My favorite. I'd probably have to rank two things. One of them would be being able to work with the crew and seeing those real applications of our work. And then the second thing would be having the opportunity to come out and speak to the public, being able to educate people about nutrition and about the kinds of work that we do at the Johnson Space Center. I enjoy being at schools and meet with young people and encourage them to get into science. I would say that those are two areas that probably make the mundane days a little bit more exciting, when I can have the opportunity to do that.

Sherri on screen

Sherri: Great. Nick is a tenth grade student and it says, he knows that you do tests on the astronauts before, during, and after flights. Could you talk about some of those and do they like it when you do those tests on them?

Janis on screen

Janis: Ultimately, yes, when you've done different types of tests. In the early days, back in 1991 or so, our emphasis was on energy metabolism. We were interested in knowing how much calories the astronauts needed, whether when they went on orbit, did they need less calories because the conventional wisdom was that, okay, you're floating around. You probably don't need as much calories to do that. And so, those studies involved us collecting samples from the astronauts. They had to collect urine and saliva samples. I can't say that they necessarily liked doing that, but going to the bathroom is a function you do normally, so all we wanted was the sample. So, that's one of the tests that we do. We will analyze the samples for different components. Other kinds of analyses, we can here look at maybe going to the bathroom in space.

This is a shuttle shot and the bathroom system on board the shuttle, and that gets to be a little more complicated, when you're not having the effects of gravity. And so I know that the astronauts get trained to use the bathroom system.

And our collecting samples from the astronauts under these conditions is a little bit extra work for them, but the data they've provided us has been invaluable in terms of understanding the effects of space flight.

Some of the other tests that we have done have been looking at things like body composition. The astronauts may need to put electrodes of various kinds on their body to collect readings. For the most part, our studies have involved collecting dietary data using the barcode reader. It's involved collecting blood samples during space flight and on the ground. On the ground, we have experienced phlebotomists, those are the people who are trained to collect blood. They will collect the samples from the astronauts, and on orbit, the astronauts have the opportunity to do that themselves. They will collect the samples from each other. For the most part, the things that we collect are primarily blood, urine, saliva, fecal samples. That's primarily what we use to collect our data.

Sherri: Now, you mentioned earlier that technology is one of the benefits that we have here on Earth, and you were talking about the barcode technology. Now, is that something that was already in existence or something that NASA came up with?

Janis: No. This is actually off the shelf barcode readers we adapted for use in space flight. So, this is one area where the astronauts have been able to benefit from something that was an Earth-based tool.

This has just made our lives a lot easier and it has a simple key board and the astronauts are usually able to key in the food items that they've eaten. So, that's one area where we have borrowed from Earth-based technology to help us do our work better.

Sherri: Great. Okay. Well, Terry writes in with a wonderful question. She says, are there ever cases that an astronaut returned with enough bone loss that it wouldn't be wise for them to fly again?

Janis: We've been lucky. We have not had that happen. I think our longest astronaut has been, Sharon Lucid was up there for six months, I think, or close to six months. We've not had any astronaut be in that bad of a condition. The concern has been primarily with going to the exploration mission. It's been estimated that it's going to take years for us to go to Mars. It won't be a matter of months, and if we cannot figure out how to slow down or even stop the bone loss in space, those astronauts could potentially be in a very dangerous position.

There's the red planet. It beckons us. You know, if something in our future, maybe not in my lifetime, but certainly in many of our audiences' lifetimes.

If we can figure out how to stop, slow or fix that bone loss that we see occurring, that would be a tremendous step forward to making those kinds of exploration missions possible. But in the US program, we've not had a situation where it prevented future flights. What we've been trying to do is come up with a protocol, an exercise program that makes that bone loss less. And I must say that our exercise physiologists are making great strides in coming up with a combination of resistive and aerobic exercise protocols that I'm sure in the future will help to decrease the bone loss in space flight.

Sherri: Well, we have about six, seven minutes left here with our expert, Janis Davis-Street.

She is a nutritionist at Johnson Space Center, so we want you to seize this last opportunity to send in your questions for her to answer. You can send those in, not at the chatroom, which we normally use. We're having some technical difficulties with that today, but send us an e-mail at quested@hotmail.com, and those will come right into us here and we will try to get as many of those answered in the time that we have left.

Well, Patty has a great question. She wants to know if astronauts lose weight when they are up on orbit?

Janis: That's an excellent question. What we have found through the history of the space program is that all, for the most part, most astronauts lose weight. And it's not a subject where I can give a simple explanation to. Even when the astronauts eat enough food, they still lose weight. A case in point. The Sky Lab missions which were flown in the '70s, the first Sky Lab Mission was 28 days. The second, I think, was 59, and then the third Sky Lab Mission was 84 days. In all three of those missions, the astronauts ate all the amount of calories that they needed, and in all the cases, they all lost weight. Added to that the complication of what was seen in the Apollo, Gemini, and in the other space programs, the astronauts did not eat their caloric requirements. The data that we have shows that they ate about 70% of their caloric requirement on shuttle, as well as on the MIR Space Station, as well as in those earlier missions. So, if you add to the fact that they're not eating enough, sometimes they're exercising a lot and even when they do eat enough, weight loss is a consistent finding during space flight.

Sherri: Well, I know that the astronauts you said get to taste test their food in the food lab, in which they can select their own menu items. They don't have to eat just whatever they're given just because it's a nutritional requirement, but there's this whole taste test process they can go through.

Plus work with the nutritionist to make sure that it is palatable and nutritious, like you were talking about earlier. But Joanne wants to know still, do you still get some complaints about the taste of food?

Janis: Not that I've heard. I'm sure there probably have been a few. I do know that John Glenn, when he flew, commented that the food was better this time around. We always say John Glenn was the first astronaut to eat in space, but the food that he ate was in a tube. It was not quite as exciting as the food that he had on his second opportunity to go into space flight. So, I'm sure that there are probably a few comments about the food, but I haven't heard those yet.

Sherri: Okay. Well, Darlene said you mentioned that taste doesn't work the same in space. How does that work?

Janis: Most of our information about taste is anecdotal, which means we haven't investigated it scientifically. But anecdotal information that we've gotten back is that some people weren't as hungry during space flight, or some of them had the sensation of maybe like when you have a cold, a head cold, your taste doesn't work quite as well, but we really don't have any hard, scientific data to show perhaps some of the pathways that taste might be altered during space flight. We try to do a study on the ground where we put people in bed rest studies. During the bed rest studies, these paid volunteers will lie in bed for days at a time, and we're able to simulate some of the fluid changes.

And in those studies, we were not able to find any clear, consistent pathways, you know, in terms of alterations of space-based alterations on taste.

Sherri: Okay. Well, we've had a lot of great questions. We probably have time for just a few more questions, if you want to submit those into Janis. Janis, you were saying that their food tastes were affected. Do the astronauts tend to eat the spicier food and like extra condiments and things on their food when they're up in space, and, if so, do we provide those for them?

Janis: Absolutely. The condiments are provided. Things like Tabasco sauce, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise. Condiments are provided for the astronauts. As I said, the variations in taste are as varied as astronauts. There are some of them who enjoy the food as it is. But I've heard, anecdotally, again, that things like the shrimp cocktail is a big favorite. It's very spicy. That might be part of the reason why it's so popular. But as you would find on an Earth-based population, the changes and feelings about taste are probably as varied on orbit as they are here on the ground.

Sherri: Well, we are just about out of time. Are there any last minute comments that you would like to give our audience out there who have been tuning in today about becoming a nutritionist or to our female audience members about celebrating National Women's History Month?

Janis: I think it's especially an honor to be here to talk with you during National Nutrition Month, National Nutrition Month, and I guess if I could leave a take-home message would be to know that doors are open and take advantage of those doors. Work hard and have a dream. I think if you have a dream and you're focused and are able to work hard towards that dream, the possibilities are endless.

Sherri: Okay. Great. Well, on behalf of the Distance Learning Outpost and the Johnson Space Center NASA Ames Quest Program, we want to thank you very much for spending this time with us today, and asking all of these wonderful questions of Janis Davis-Street. We hope that you enjoyed it, and we look forward to seeing you again. So long from Johnson Space Center.

End of presentation