NASA History Community:

             Today at noon ET, our office will sponsor a lunchtime talk by Alwin Cubasch on “Space Food for the Elderly.”  This promises to be a fascinating topic so I hope you can join us in a few hours.

Please feel free to forward this information to others who may be interested.  Thanks,

              Steve

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NASA History Talk:  “Space Food for the Elderly” by Alwin Cubasch

Time/Date/Location:  noon - 1 pm ET, Wednesday 17 January, virtual via MS Teams link (no prior registration necessary) 

Contact:  Steve Garber (stephen.j.garber@nasa.gov)

Description:  When NASA came under pressure to transform space technology into spin-offs with a positive societal impact in the 1970s, the Food and Nutrition Branch at NASA’s Johnson Space Center explored ways to put its space food technologies to use in American kitchens. One of the pressing concerns of the day was malnutrition and poverty among aging Americans in rural communities who could not be reached by existing care programs.

Therefore, the Meal System for the Elderly aimed to provide elderly in remote areas with freeze-dehydrated easy-to-prepare space food rations that could be kept without refrigeration and be cooked by just adding the right amount of water. After a field trial in Texas from 1975 to 1976, however, the program was discontinued. The presentation will look at the interplay between new technologies, political expectations and different forms of nutritional knowledge, from which the this program emerged and the reasons for the somewhat unceremonious end of the program.

Alwin J. Cubasch is a research associate at Humboldt University in Berlin and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Innsbruck.

Stephen Garber

(he/him)

NASA History Division

Office of Communications

NASA Headquarters

Mary W. Jackson Building, Room 5P25

Washington, DC 20546

202-358-0385

http://www.nasa.gov/history/