LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- NASA is teaming up with Sullivan University to teach high school students how to make meals for astronauts in space.
Culinary students took part in a summer camp Tuesday at Sullivan to prepare them to compete in the Astronaut Culinary Challenge. The winning dish will end up on the International Space Station.
"This is our first year of doing a NASA Hunch Sullivan camp," said Allison Westover, the director of the NASA Hunch Culinary Challenge. "The students get to learn about NASA, learn about cooking and then hopefully go back to their schools and be able to want to be a part of our NASA Hunch Culinary Challenge for the school year."
When it comes to cosmic cooking, you can't just throw together a meal of beans and hot dogs, Westover said. Meals must be carefully crafted with the astronauts' long-term nutritional needs in mind.
"We're really doing things very differently than you would for any other kind of, like, culinary program," she said. "A normal person in culinary might just, 'Let me just go salt and pepper that chicken.' We can't do that. We need to know exactly how much salt is in something, and just a tiny amount of salt is a lot of sodium."
The bottom line is the types and amounts of ingredients required for a meal in space are different from those on the ground.
"There's a bunch of things that have to be changed just so the astronauts can stay healthy," said Nicholas Eberle, a student from Apopka, Florida. "Sodium, fats, sugars, saturated fats, you have to have enough fibers — all of that stuff is important."
The beauty of the competition, Westover said, is the breadth of knowledge students obtain in order to compete.
"They're also learning about nutrition science," she said. "They're learning about food processing and learning about the effects on the body from a physiological perspective of the astronauts when they're in a microgravity environment."
Nathaniel Covell, a student from Lexington, said cooks also have to consider the environment astronauts are living in.
"They're bodies are constantly changing up in space too, so they've got to make sure they're staying healthy and able to not have too many issues," he said.
For Alex Adams, another student from Lexington, the program is about satisfying her passions.
"I've found that it would be fun to combine something I love — science — with something I also love: cooking," she said.
The camp has drawn students from across the country to Louisville.
"We have students that are from Colorado here, from Florida," Westover said. "It's a small group this year, but we're excited about it and hope that next year the program will grow. We also want them to learn a lot and to see that they could actually do some different kinds of jobs at NASA, being a nutrition scientist for the food lab, or a chef."
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