Maggie Coblentz

meeting because you think, is this really what's happening right now?

There's the veggie project on the ISS that's growing fresh ingredients in space, but these are really just herbs and little pieces of lettuce that are more for emotional well-being to add a sprig to your food.

It's unrealistic that an astronaut could truly sustain themselves off of what's possible to grow in space, at least with what

Like, I couldn't even eat this.

So for me, it was more interviews, anecdotal reports from astronauts, mostly ESA and NASA astronauts.

And oftentimes when interviewing them, they sort of start off by saying, you know, food doesn't matter.

This was my life dream to go to space.

I was perhaps trained in the military and it's no concern for me because I'm just in space.

But then you get a little bit deeper into the conversation, and then the complaining starts, and the food's horrible, and they don't have anywhere to put their food waste, so they get this tremendous food fatigue because they have to eat their food out of this plastic, and they can't just throw it out because it could rot or even combust, so they actually have to lick all of the packages clean after every single meal.

There's no fridge to store their leftovers.

One Italian astronaut, Paolo Nespoli, told me the chocolate's horrible.

So he's complaining about the chocolate.

The truth comes out eventually.

Did you have to eat any of it?

I have eaten some of it.

I have a personal collection of space food with me at all times.

Actually, I have a few really special ones.

I'm waiting for the day.

I don't know.

This one I'm holding right now is from March 2016.