To boldly dine where no one has dined before…

It’s not often that the Science Lite desk is allowed beyond the confines of the office. And for good reason – calamity, befuddlement and faux pas are usually quick to follow any excursion we make.

Yet a few weeks ago we were allowed, indeed encouraged, to attend an event that was to launch the 18^th National Science and Engineering week. “It’ll be right up your street,” said our Editor. “...It involves food”.

Glances were exchanged – our reputation as ceaseless gluttons had obviously become entrenched. None-the-less we were honoured to be invited to such an event, which we assumed would be nothing more than an announcement of NSEW accompanied by the usual finger food buffet. However upon arrival at the venue – the absolutely excellent Science Museum – it became swiftly obvious that things were far from the norm.

“Here, have one of these!” enthused a friendly PR girl as we arrived. In her hand she thrust toward us a tray of glasses containing what looked to be orange juice – yet none of us has previously experienced orange juice that fluoresces whilst riotously bubbling. Again glances were exchanged.

It turned out that the effervescing libation was not orange juice but rather ‘Jupiter Juice’ – the first of many space themed dishes that we were to be presented with that afternoon. You see the event was in fact a ‘space banquet’ created by experimental foodies The Robin Collective along with space nutrition expert Professor Brian Ratcliffe. Over the next hour we were treated to some of the most bizarre and tasty things ever to be placed in the Science Lite mouth.

To start, a sample of the kind of breakfast that might be served if – or rather when – space tourists zip about in orbit. The “Mars Breakfast Bar” was fairly inconspicuous when it arrived, “a reddish brown puck of stuff” is the kindest description we can think of – and a tentative sniff didn’t give much else away. But once nestled in the mouth…oh my! It was a full English breakfast – yet it quite clearly was nothing of the sort. Tongue and eyes were in total disagreement, every chew convincing us further that we were in the best greasy spoon café you can imagine.

However, by far the biggest surprise during the meal was a small, inconspicuous looking spoonful of powder. We were instructed to let the powder dissolve on our tongues, and then suck enthusiastically on a slice of lemon. Alarm bells began to ring out – an unbearable sourness would be a rather unpleasant end to an otherwise spectacular meal. We need not have worried – the powder had worked some gustatory magic, and the lemon betrayed its citrus sharpness for almost overwhelming sweetness. The powder contained miraculin – a glycoprotein extracted from the fruit of Synsepalum dulcificum – which lived up to its name by changing the structure of the taste cells on our tongues. As a result, the sweet receptors are activated by ordinarily sour acids. And what a spectacular end to a splendid meal it was.

It may seem an odd thing to honour space science with.  Food and space travel have been uneasy bedfellows for some time with early astronauts resorting to smuggling food in their space suits so bad was the quality of food provided for them. The crew of Gemini III sneaked a corned beef sandwich on their spaceflight; they were however rumbled by ground control and rebuked by NASA for the act. Always a nation with a flair for the dramatic, a congressional hearing was called, forcing the NASA deputy administrator George Mueller to promise no repeats.

Yet despite a bumpy relationship, the science of food in space is vital. Without it, humanity’s expansion into space – for both exploration and pleasure – will be doomed. And perhaps more importantly than that, it certainly makes for the tastiest press event Science Lite has ever attended.