{"id":807,"date":"2008-11-27T10:23:40","date_gmt":"2008-11-27T14:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=807"},"modified":"2008-12-29T21:39:42","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T02:39:42","slug":"happy-thanksgiving-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=807","title":{"rendered":"Happy Thanksgiving!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Your corn is sweeter, your potatoes are starchier and your turkey is much, much bigger than the foods that sat on your grandparents’ Thanksgiving dinner table.<\/p>\n

Most everything on your plate has undergone tremendous genetic change under the intense selective pressures of industrial farming. Pilgrims and American Indians ate foods called corn and turkey, but the actual organisms they consumed didn’t look or taste much at all like our modern variants do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A History of Thanksgiving in Space<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving may be a longstanding tradition that dates back to 1621 on Earth, but it’s a relatively recent phenomenon in void of space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Astronauts share freeze-dried Thanksgiving feast<\/a><\/p>\n

It is somewhat unusual for shuttle and station crews to eat a meal together, given their different schedules and various chores. The crew members will take several precautions for the meal \u00e2\u20ac\u201d keeping fire extinguishers and gas masks in the dining area, for instance.<\/p>\n

“So, if anything happens when they’re all sitting in one place, you don’t have to run in all the wrong directions to grab all the equipment you need,” said flight director Holly Ridings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanksgiving in space: stiff turkey, bland yams<\/a><\/p>\n

A week before Thanksgiving, NASA gave reporters a taste-test of the astronauts’ holiday dinner. The smoked turkey was slightly stiffer than deli meat, like after it has been left in the refrigerator a week past its expiration date. The candied yams had a syrupy sweetness outside that dissolved into blandness in the middle. The green beans with mushrooms tasted like they have been frozen and then microwaved to an inch of their life.<\/p>\n

The saving grace was a sublime cranapple dessert. There was a tartness to the apples and sweetness to the cranberries mixed with pecans and syrup in a dish that resembles cobbler filling.<\/p>\n

NASA takes special pride in desserts.<\/p>\n

“All our desserts are wonderful,” Perchonok said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner: Your corn is sweeter, your potatoes are starchier and your turkey is much, much bigger than the foods that sat on your grandparents’ Thanksgiving dinner table. Most everything on your plate has undergone … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-d1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":322,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=322","url_meta":{"origin":807,"position":0},"title":"Happy Thanksgiving!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! If you're killing time until the Turkey is done, try your hand at this turkey quiz. I scored 6 out of 10.","rel":"","context":"In "On the Web"","block_context":{"text":"On the Web","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":806,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=806","url_meta":{"origin":807,"position":1},"title":"Physics Talks Turkey This Thanksgiving — Tips From Science On How To Cook A Better Bird","author":"Jonathan Smith","date":"November 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00c2\u00a0Whether you like dark or white meat, cooks can look to physics for some tips for making sure that Thanksgiving turkey is quickly gobbled up. McGee has two solutions to the this troublesome turkey problem. The first is a trusty meat thermometer. \"There's no substitute for checking the temperature of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2962,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2962","url_meta":{"origin":807,"position":2},"title":"“Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bible belt runs the show in Tallahassee”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Most Floridians are still enjoying their turkey eating and deal hunting and so not much is developing concerning the filing in our state legislature of an \"academic freedom act\" bill by Sen. Dennis Baxley. It was introduced quietly last Friday and as soon as I was alerted to it I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=34"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1494,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1494","url_meta":{"origin":807,"position":3},"title":"Darwin Day","author":"Jonathan Smith","date":"February 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I had written a Op Ed for one of the Florida Newspapers entitled \"Do We Need Darwin\" which they agreed to publish. However on Thursday last I recievd a e-mail from them stating that they wanted\u00c2\u00a0sole rights to the article and I was not allowed to republish all, or any\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=51","url_meta":{"origin":807,"position":4},"title":"Popcorn in Space","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Eastway Elementary students test popping corn in space Learning about outer space is cool. Eating popcorn also is cool. Put them together, and you have a science experiment Eastway Elementary fourth-grader Micha Jordan called Friday \"really cool.\" Micha and other Eastway students in Cindy Spraggins' second-grade class and Ellen Austin's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2955,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2955","url_meta":{"origin":807,"position":5},"title":"The controversy “will never be over”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 22, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel's School Zone blog posted a short story about the new \"controversial theories\" bill recently filed by Sen. Dennis Baxley:\u00c2\u00a0Sen. Baxley files school bill to require 'controversial' science topics be taught in 'balanced' way. State Sen. Dennis Baxley, who once said controversy about evolution being taught in public\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=34"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}