The test kitchen also employed black women, such as Julie Stewart, who used cooking and home economics as a pathway to greater opportunities. Stewart worked as an aide to Centini at Stouffer’s, and like most of the black women who worked on the space program at NASA or its contractors, Stewart isn’t included in the official NASA or Stouffer’s press materials or covered in mainstream publications. But on September 20, 1969, the historic black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, published a profile of Stewart’s work, captioned "Julie Stewart Helped NASA Plan Menus For Apollo 11 Astronauts." The Pittsburgh Courier traced Stewart’s upward climb from Stouffer’s shipping department to the test kitchen. According to the article, Stewart was a working mother of three whose career at Stouffer's began in 1957. After five years in the shipping department, Stewart joined the home economics department, where she designed recipes, cooked, enforced FDA regulations, staged food for photos, and made serving suggestions. One of her recipes, Salisbury Stroganoff, was selected and approved for the Apollo 11 astronauts. The article proudly announced to its majority black readership that “everyone who's been to the moon—and we, too—can enjoy the delicious results of Julie Stewart's efforts.” Little else is known about Stewart’s career at Stouffer’s.

On August 2, 1969, another black newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News, profiled Sara Thompson, the quality control supervisor at Stouffer’s, in “Quarantine Meals out of this World.” Thompson’s scientific labor and knowledge of chemistry, bacteriology, and biology was critical to the astronauts’ health during their time in quarantine. As the quality control supervisor, Thompson inspected all packaging and food products visually and biochemically for dirt, wood, dust, and bacteria. In the photograph, Thompson can be seen in Stouffer’s laboratory pipetting a liquid, likely a growth serum, onto Petri dishes used for growing colonies of bacteria. Thompson utilized food science methodologies to ensure these tests aligned and exceeded the expectations of the FDA, Stouffer's, and NASA.