Grace Loke is a PhD student at RMIT in Melbourne and is co-lead in a team of researchers exploring the role of our sensory perception in the way we enjoy eating. More specifically, they are looking at the reasons why astronauts report meals taste bland in space and as a result are failing to eat their normal nutritional intake. Previous research has shown that aroma plays a large role in how we perceive food, but could it also be that aroma might affect mood and willingness or openness to the enjoyment of that food? The researchers are using Virtual Reality to simulate the astronauts environment and this, of course adds another layer to understanding the many factors involved in our experience of eating and the implications could go far beyond just the astronauts situation. This is obviously a departure from chatting to a chef, but I found the ideas so fascinating I just had to know more.
Conversation with a chef: Hi Grace. Thanks so much for agreeing to speak to me. It's such a fascinating topic, so I'm really interested to hear more.
Grace Love: Thank you so much for your interest in the research.
Let's just situate your involvement in the research. What's your part in this?
I'm a PhD candidate at RMIT University, but I'm also one of the co-lead researchers on this project.
In terms of a thesis, what is the title? I did read a couple of different titles. There's the Smell Perception in Virtual Spacecraft, a ground-based approach to Sensory and Chemical Data. Is that what you're calling it?
Yes, that's the actual title of it.
Then there are a couple of other titles in the media, Food aroma study, may help explain why meals taste bad in space. And then you wrote a really great article in The Conversation as well, which I thought was good. Astronauts don't eat enough because food tastes bland in space. We are trying to work out why. Which really was the study in a nutshell. What led you to this quite niche study?
Our team at RMIT really wanted to understand how astronauts eat in space. Particularly we know that from a sensory science background, which is where I come from, the environment in which we eat affects how much we actually enjoy our food. Previous reports from astronauts, they have said that food tastes different in space being less flavourful and more bland. So that was something we thought was worth exploring, because a lot of the times when astronauts go on these space missions, they're actually not meeting their energy needs, which means they just need to eat more. While this is manageable for shorter missions, like maybe a couple of months, when we think about space travel into well far beyond the moon to Mars and even beyond that, it might be really detrimental to the health if they're not meeting those energy needs.
So this study is really about it not being purely physiological, but also environmental. Is that right?
That's right.
I was reading in the article that initially there was some thoughts around perhaps gravity affecting where the fluid was held in the body. So, instead of lower down in the body as on Earth, more up around the head. So that might affect aromas and things, but that's only a small part of it. Is that right?
Yes. In space there's actually so much to consider. Gravity is just one part of it. Like you said, when you're in that environment, all the fluids in your body, like your blood for example, rush up to your head and creates a lot of pressure. And from this pressure you get the sensation of having a blocked nose. Thats one of the ways where you can lose your sense of flavour perception, I would say, but within this environment as well. If you think of being in an air tight container, there's no circulation. It's more just recycled air, sort of like being in an airplane, just recycled air and even the water is recycled. There are a lot of things that could affect their sense of taste, their sense of smell and their flavour perception. And even in the space environment, we don't really understand how aroma chemical particles, how they disperse in the air and how that affects how we smell them.
Well, there's two parts to this really. Because when astronauts first go up into space, they also experience something called space sickness. It is what it sounds like really, they feel really nauseous and they just want to lie down. It's a really bad time. Because of that, they also lose their appetite. But when it does come to hunger, while they do feel hungry, like any other person, foods just generally don't really appeal to them as much as they would compared to on Earth.
What were the parameters of this research? How did you work out how to approach this problem?
How is a big question. We had a lot of time to think and get a lot of people from different departments within RMIT University. We collaborated with someone from Space Science. Her name is Gail. She was a previous astronaut trainer. She was the one who inspired us to really tackle the problems of nutrition in space. And from her we got those insights of, how are astronauts actually feeling in space because it's such an isolating and confining type of environment, which is really what we wanted to hone into. And then we've got people from computer engineering who have worked with us to create this virtual reality simulation. And this simulation basically models the international Space station or the ISS to really get you feeling immersed in this space-like environment. That's what we use to test on our cardio participants.
What we truly want to work towards here is personalising diet. You talk to chefs a lot. They make their own menus and it always has to be fun and interesting. But when we combine science, food and art, we’re working towards personalising diets driven by each person’s sensory experience, making it very unique to you. In that sense you can enjoy your food better, maybe even encourage better eating habits through that as well. ~ Grace Loke, RMIT
What DO astronauts eat? I was talking to someone about this and they were saying, don't they just have, sachets or tubes? What do they actually eat?
You know what, before I started my research, that's exactly what I thought. But space food has really evolved since then. Back in the early days of space travel, everything was basically in toothpaste tubes. You'd squeeze it out and you basically ate mush. Then we fast tracked into freeze dried foods, like freeze dried berries for example. Because having anything that's fresh, obviously we can't do that in space. You need something with a really long shelf life, something that's safe for the radioactive environment, for example. And also in space, everything needs to be small, compact and as light as it can possibly be. But nowadays space food has evolved in such a way that there are researchers at other universities looking at planting food in space: planting fresh vegetables to be able to encourage astronauts to eat more fresh foods and also make them a bit happier because there's a bit of a connection to earth in that sense.
Later in the article you mention the importance of particular aromas such as vanilla and almond. Where does that come into it?
Our study looked at very basic food aromas. We looked at vanilla, almond and lemon. And what we found is that in this space-like environment, those aromas, vanilla and almond were perceived as more intense. Whereas when we compared it to an earthly setting where we just put people in a room with a chair and a table, they had a lower perception of that intensity. Vanilla and almond are two very different flavours, but on a chemical level, they actually share a common chemical compound called benzaldehyde. Benzaldehyde is known to give off that sweet almond-like odour, but surprisingly it's also present in vanilla. Vanilla also has other chemical compounds like vanillin for example, that gives it that sweet characteristic. And what we think is that those sweet characteristics from these aromas are what leads to a higher intensity perception in a space like environment. So truly the bottom line here is that we may smell food almost differently in space, but it's just selective as to what kind.
And then would the idea be to use that to put into the food to encourage them to eat more?
One of the things that we thought about while we were forming the project and even after getting all the results from this was, what if we put someone in a room and we had them eat a meal, but in the background we disperse the smell of vanilla, for example. How would that change the way they see their food? Would that boost their appetite for example? So that's one of the things that we really want to try out. But at the moment we're looking at very fundamental stuff to see if there even is a difference.
I feel like those kind of scents, especially vanilla – you can buy vanilla body fragrance can't you and people see that as a delicious thing to wear. So maybe the idea of home baking and so on is very appealing to people and maybe it does alter our perception of what's going on as well because it makes us feel cosy and homely. That's fascinating.
Exactly. What we truly want to work towards here is personalising diet. You talk to chefs a lot. They make their own menus and it always has to be fun and interesting. But when we combine science, food and art, we're working towards personalising diets driven by each person's sensory experience, making it very unique to you. In that sense you can enjoy your food better, maybe even encourage better eating habits through that as well.
Then that might have some knock-on effects of perhaps being able to use that with people on earth who are in those isolated situations, such as people in aged care.
Yes. I wonder how that would've helped us in the pandemic, for example. We were pretty much in a situation of being very isolated, confined to our rooms at the time. So if only something like that existed back then, it would've been very interesting.
Absolutely. So how much further have you got to go on this project?
This is just the beginning. In the coming weeks or a month or so, we will be recruiting for a separate project that we have started to run. This next project is really looking at more complex flavours. Here we only use three very basic aromas, but later on we want to look at things that may be indicative of a cultural difference as well. Because this study has shown that there is individual variation in how people smell things. For example, I don't know about you, but I hate cilantro. Every time we go out to a market, for example, and I'm standing next to fresh produce, I can tell you which direction the coriander's coming from. So that individual variation in people is what we're truly interested in as well. Then if we look at aromas that are, let's say, native to Australia, like eucalyptus and lemon myrtle, how would that change your perception? Because some people are not familiar with these smells.
There's so much complexity isn't there? And so much to think about. We often talk about eating with the senses, but that really takes it to a whole next level. Is there anything else you wanted to share about what you're doing?
I think just the fact that we wouldn't have gone in here if it weren't for collaboration and that's what we're really looking for. Whether it's collaborating with space agencies for example, or even collaborating in a astronomical sense; working together with chefs, scientists can only do so much in uncovering the knowledge, but it's really the people who apply them that play a big role in this as well.
Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm going to be thinking about this for days.