Nutrition: A Special Science
A Wide Breadth of Experience

Nutrition: A Special Science

I have enjoyed the field of nutrition for several years. What is special about this science is that it combines biology and chemistry in a practical way. Foods and nutrients are made of chemicals which act together to affect all the body's processes - it can be a very exciting field. Today, so many diseases are related to life style choices - and nutrition is one of those that has a major impact on health. I studied nutrition in college and graduate school, and had my first exposure to what nutrition was all about one summer in Guyana when I was involved in a US-sponsored feeding program in rural areas in Guyana. My first job out of graduate school was at a USDA research center at Baylor College of Medicine (at the Texas Medical Center in Houston) dedicated to determining the nutritional requirements of children. After three years there I joined the space program. It has been a rewarding and exciting career path.

A Breadth of Experiences

My job provides a wide breadth of experiences. In one of my early projects we examined how many calories the astronauts would need to eat while they flew on the Shuttle. During this study we measured how much food they ate by scanning each food item with a bar code reader, a little like the one they use in the grocery store. We also measured how many calories they burned and found out that, on the shorter Shuttle flights, the astronauts use the same number of calories as they do here on Earth. We are now involved in a number of ground-based and flight studies which look at the role of nutrition in keeping the astronauts healthy, especially during the long flights.