A document entitled "Food Handling Procedures" was prepared and given to 

 Base Camp personnel responsible for food transfer and control. The docu- 

 ment contained information regarding food storage, food transfer procedures 

 and schedules, aquanaut briefing and debriefing, and documentation and 

 evaluation. 



The aquanauts were briefed and debriefed at the beginning and termination 

 of each dive. Whenever possible, representatives from the Food and 

 Nutrition Group conducted the briefing and debriefing sessions. In each 

 briefing session, the aquanauts were instructed to adhere to the menu 

 which had been designed for that particular dive. 



Fourteen aquanauts, members of three consecutive 20-day missions in the 

 TEKTITE II series, made up the original subject pool for the energy expendi- 

 ture study. However, only seven were included in the final analysis. Three 

 individuals were excluded because of incomplete dietary consumption records. 

 Large weight losses or gains eliminated three others. The seventh was 

 omitted from analysis due to lack of available weight change data. 



Prior to their respective missions, each aquanaut was asked to note on a 

 meal checklist the portion of all food items consumed after each meal 

 during the actual dive. Checklists had been preprinted on 11" x 17" water- 

 proofed placemats which could easily be torn from a supplier pad. 



RESULTS 



Considerable food preference data were collected during the TEKTITE program. 

 Food preference forms were not completed for every menu component and con- 

 sequently the results are incomplete. Food preference data that were 

 collected may be obtained from the first author of this section. 



In general, the data indicate that breakfast can be a very uninteresting 

 meal for many people, and some breakfast items apparently did not store well 

 in a frozen or canned state. The most uniformly accepted breakfast items 

 were coffee cake, sweet rolls, escalloped apples and French toast. Canned 

 bacon and frozen omelettes were not well accepted initially and became less 

 acceptable when repeated in the menu. 



One meal, designed for lunch which would require minimum preparation time, 

 consisted primarily of a frozen roast beef sandwich. During the first dive 

 this lunch was extremely well accepted (mean rating of 8) and it was 

 recommended that more frozen sandwiches be incorporated into the menus, 

 Aquanauts on subsequent dives gave this lunch a mean rating of 4.6 and dis- 

 liked it because the sandwich took too long to thaw and because there was no 

 hot food in the meal. 



Several items were generally well liked by the male aquanauts but not well 

 accepted by the female group on Dive 6. The most outstanding example of 

 this is illustrated by the lamb chops which were the most highly accepted 

 meat item for all male groups. The overall male mean rating for lamb chops 



VIII-92 



