Nutritional Analysis
During the period of 3/20 to 4/30/00 I entered all the foods I ate into Dr. Walford's nutritional analysis program. Though this program is a little shaky in some areas, it certainly accomplished what I wanted it to do, namely tell me what my nutritional balance is. This is fairly important since I was attempting to loose weight during these 6 weeks, and (as the calories consumed show) was eating a minimal diet.
This data is presented not as an analysis of the produce of Mars Base Zero, but as a technique for recording, analyzing and presenting nutritional data.
Some facets of the Mars Base Zero diet are reflected in these analyses. For example the high cholesterol, which is a result of the eggs Mars Base Zero's hens produce.
Attached is a listing of the foods eaten during the study period (broken down by week), along with the nutritional analysis.
Nutritional
graphs
The following nutritional graphs are all based on % of diet over a week, so 700% would be the same as 100% of the Recommended Daily Allowance daily.
Over
the last 6 weeks, I have been dieting.
As you can see from my weight above, I have been successful in loosing
some weight. If we were running a serious
biosphere, the occupant's weight should remain constant, or your system is not
producing enough calories. In Biosphere
II, the occupants lost a considerable amount of weight, indicating that their
system was not producing enough calories.
If you divide by 7, you will see that during this period I was eating between half and 2/3 of the RDA for calories.
Under the diet I was eating, protein was not a problem. Indeed my amino acid balance was very high (see below).
Total fat was only slightly low. I was quite surprised that it was actually higher than the % RDA, since I was eating what I thought was a low-fat diet. Though I did indulge (many times) in corn chips, which have a lot of fat. Maybe I should cut them out?!
Saturated fat is more like what I was expecting total fat to be.
For the amount of calories and the types of foods I was eating, this is about what I expected all fats to be like.
Polyunsaturated fat is much higher that I was expecting. The next time I do this I shall have to see if I can determine where I am getting all this fat from.
Carbohydrates were a lower % of calories than I was expecting. I expected a diet that was close to that which could be produced in a closed structure would be very high in carbohydrates. And, while it is a higher percentage of calories than fat, it is still lower than expected.
Keeping in mind that my RDA for calories is very low, I think I did pretty well in fiber. Though it is still lower than I would expect from a diet similar to the one we'll get from Mars Base Zero.
Cholesterol varied widely, depending on egg consumption. On average it was much higher than desired due to the number of eggs eaten. (The chickens in Mars Base Zero produce about a dozen eggs a week, which is very nice for eating but not so nice for your cholesterol consumption!)
Vitamin A tended to be low without carrots, so I ate carrots on a regular basis. As you can see this more than corrected the problem!
No problems with vitamin B-6.
Vitamin B-12 had a few problems on a vegetarian diet, but this was always corrected by the end of the week. This may be a problem for inhabitants of closed ecosystems; it can be alleviated by small amounts of meat from chickens, fish or other sources on a regular basis.
No problems with vitamin C.
Vitamin E proved to be something of a problem. This was corrected, in large part, by eating more sunflower seeds (which are rich in vitamin E.) This is a likely solution for closed ecosystem inhabitants too.
There were a few problems with thiamine. This too can be corrected with sunflower seeds.
There were no problems with folacin.
Although borderline, I did not have to modify my diet (eg eat sunflower seeds) to get a minimal amount of riboflavin.
Niacin was something of a problem. I did not modify my diet to increase niacin consumption; if I had wanted to do so I should have eaten more yogurt, mushroom or spinach.
There were no problems with pantothenic acid.
Calcium was a bit of a problem, and will be a real problem in a closed ecosystem. I tackled it by drinking skim milk, eating a lot of yogurt, and managed to keep it in an acceptable range. In a closed ecosystem, calcium could be a problem.
Copper was a real problem. I am a little surprised at the low level, for I was eating a lot of grains (which are a good source). I could add more legumes to the diet to improve the copper levels.
I was concerned about iron when I began this diet, but it turned out not to be critical; I appeared to get enough from the foods I was eating.
Magnesium was occasionally low, but for the most part ok.
Phosphorus was ok.
Potassium was ok.
Selenium occasionally gave me problems. I modified my diet a couple of times to increase my selenium intake.
Sodium was hard to keep out of my diet. Especially when eating processed foods, which is where nearly all the sodium here originated from.
Zinc posed a major problem. Nearly every week it was below RDA. So I ate a lot of oysters, which is a good source of zinc (you can really tell the weeks I missed eating them). In a closed ecosystem zinc is going to be critically low; I recommend fertilizing the soil with a surplus of zinc so extra zinc will be present in the foods grown in that soil.
I was a little surprised at the high amount of amino acids I was getting. This is in spite of the fact my calories were so low. But it indicates that my diet was well balanced in protein.
Conclusion
Gathering the data (ie weighing the food) was not a great effort. Nor was entering it into the computer. When food was eaten elsewhere, it was estimated, which I feel was adequate for my needs. Using this technique it would be easy to use to obtain complete nutritional data for inhabitants of closed ecological life support systems.
The diet undertaken between March 20, 2000 and April 30, 2000 was very instructive. Although it was very low in calories, it was possible to have a reasonably balanced diet. Indicators for the diet for a completely closed ecosystem show that some areas may be hard to attain enough nutrients, particularly calcium and zinc. These areas need further investigation before a closed ecosystem diet is adopted.
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current copyright laws protect this page, even though not specifically
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However
if you want to use portions of it feel free to do so, though I would appreciate
it if you would acknowledge my authorship.