What The Chiléan Miners Ate

Recently a good portion of the world’s television viewing audience was glued to their sets watching 33 Chiléan miners being rescued from the collapsed mine they’d been trapped in for 69 days. When they finally emerged, they looked pretty healthy – mainly because the rescuers above had tailored a specific diet for them (as well as an exercise regime of about an hour a day).

Well, not at first. Initially, when 700,000 tonnes of rock collapsed in a mine shaft mine 300 meters (984 feet) underground on August 5th, trapping them in the mine, there was no way to get food down to them. When a ventalation shaft collapsed a few days later things were looking grim. But on August 22nd a drill probe reached them, and they sent back a note saying “All 33 of us are well inside the shelter.”

Chilean miner Mario Sepulveda celebrates with Chilean first lady Cecilia Morel after being brought to the surface on October 13, 2010 after being trapped underground for 69 days. Not pictured: The beer and sex he's planning to have. Photo: Hugo Infante / AFP /Getty Images

On August 23rd, 18 days after the initial collapse, the first supplies were sent down.

In those first 18 days the men survived on two mouthfuls of tuna, a sip of milk and a few bites of crackers every other day – similar to my 100 days of starvation, except that I had the luxury of seeing sky and breathing fresh air whenever I wanted. As expected, the miners lost an average of 8 – 10 kilograms (17.6 – 22 lbs) each.

Once the supplies started coming each man was given a 200 mL serving of a medical, milk-based nutritional supplement called Supportan, sent in packets known as “passenger pigeons” down 3″ tubes. Remember, drilling 300 metres into the Earth, accurately hitting a small room at the bottom, takes time, and on  August 29th the miners had moved camp to a drier, cooler site deeper inside the mine. They also spoke for the first time with their loved ones by radio-telephone.

At least one of the miners, Yonny Barrios, had paramedic training. When urine test strips were sent down, he was able to report that about half the miners were dehydrated, and their urine contained ketones and myoglobin proteins. This meant they were in ketosis, burning fat for fuel, but also breaking down muscle in starvation mode.

The Copiapo regional hospital began preparing food for the men. ”They were very fragile,” said Amelia Pons, the hospital’s chief coordinator of nutrition.

The miners were instructed to double their water intake, and were provided with protein and vitamins liquid gels. Their Supportan intake was increased to 5 servings daily over the next 5 days.

Finally they received cereal with pear and apple sauce. Why did they take so long? To avoid something called refeeding syndrome, which is when someone who is in starvation mode eats too much food at once, or the wrong kinds of food. If you’ve seen Band of Brothers you may remember the scene where the American airborne troops had to take away food from starving death camp inmates. Refeeding syndrome would be why; it can cause heart failure, seizures, coma, delirium or sudden death.

Back to the miners. Once they were accustomed to food again, they were fed a diet of about 2,300 calories a day. I’ve said several times on this site that a grown man requires about 2,500 calories a day, so slightly underfeeding them might seem a bit odd… but that 2,500 calories a day is an average for guys who sleep in a regular, cosy bed every night not ones trapped in a hot mine for weeks.

Yeah, mines get hot. I was in one once filming a scene for a movie about the first world war (the mine was used to simulate the tunnels dug under the trenches). We were only in there for a single day, yet we were sweating like crazy, getting bitchy with each other, and otherwise not having a pleasant time of it. Sure our costume uniforms were layered wool, but we could also leave if things got too uncomfortable. Leaving is the one ability the trapped miners, by definition, didn’t have.

In my time in a real military, when we were doing field exercises we’d eat 3,500 – 4,000 calories a day. I wish someone could tell us why they only fed the trapped miners 2,300 calories a day.

Here to tell us why they only fed the trapped miners 2,300 calories a day is Dr. J.D. Polk, chief of the Space Medicine Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. His answer? “Because they still had to fit in the escape module.” To keep squabbling over portions to a minimum, the meals were packed individually and labelled by name.

“Some of the folks were fairly large men . . . you don’t want them to get too large.”

A cook shows food, prepared at the local hospital, that was later sent through a pipe to miners trapped at the San Jose mine in Copiapo, Chile. Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010. Photo: AP/Luis Hidalgo, Pool

A typical menu for the miners consisted of liquid yogurt with toast and jam for breakfast; four protein cookies for a morning snack; a lunch of baked salmon with mashed potatoes and pineapple for dessert, a bottle of Gatorade for the electrolytes (hot mine. sweating. remember?); bread and dulce de leche — a popular caramel-milk treat — for an afternoon snack; and baked pork with corn for supper with a tangerine for dessert.

Some of the men complained that they were hungry – after all, eating and exercising was about their only form of entertainment for more than two months -and teased Amelia Pons to send down beer and wine.

On Sept. 18, Chile’s national holiday, each man got an empanada.

As the day of rescue grew nearer, the miners began talking about their planned first home-cooked meals above ground. They wanted homemade stew, empanadas, raw seafood marinated in lemon juice and fish stuffed with bacon, tomato and onion.

“All of them want to have traditional Chilean food, called Asabu” said Gustavo Gebert, a spokesman for the Chilean Health Ministry. “Almost all of them want to share a big BBQ with their family.”

One of the miners, 45 year old Pablo Rojas Villacorta, wanted spaghetti with sauce the way his mother-in-law makes it.

“It’s his favourite and he thinks [my mother] is a better cook than me,” said his wife, Ximena Contreas.

Chilean officials consulted with NASA on refeeding syndrome and on the diet recommended for the miners’ safe ascent to ground level in the tiny capsule you may have seen mocked up on several cable news networks. The capsule was 4 meters tall, but just 53 centimeters (less than 21″) wide. By this point, because of the miner’s relocation, the rescue shaft was 630 meters deep. Motion sickness was a concern, as was the risk of a sudden drop in blood pressure if the miners locked their knees while standing upright in the capsule. Locking knees impedes proper blood circulation to the brain and heart.

Regular readers may recall me complaining of dizzy spells and even fainting a few times while starving. Lack of food and lack of adequate sodium meant my blood pressure was low. Falling down at the gym is embarrassing, and might cause owies. Low blood pressure in a slender, shoulder crushing capsule could be fatal.

Typically, a person experiencing a sudden drop in blood pressure will fall down, which allows the blood that has pooled in the lower extremities to circulate. When you’re stuffed in a narrow capsule there’s no room to fall down. You’re stuck in an upright position, meaning your brain or heart go without the adequate amount of blood for the time it takes to go up the 630 meter shaft to the surface.

So in preparation for the evacuation, the miners took salt tablets in the 12 hours prior and drank about a liter of an electrolyte solution like Gatorade Pro. They wore special girdles to prevent blood from pooling in their legs and feet, kind of like the rig developed by Canadians for fighter pilots to keep blood up in the torso under higher G.

“As you’ve seen with the miners coming out, they look fantastic, they’re extremely well-hydrated, their blood pressure is in good shape,” Dr. Polk observed. ”In all rescue operations you plan for the worse and hope for the best. We’ve seen what looks to be the best.”

As the men emerged from what could have been their tomb, looking like they just spent five weeks at a health and fitness spa, Pons knew her menu plan had been a success.

“I’m happy with the results,” she said. “I just hope they maintain it.”