Barry Zito is eating an areospace diet:

What fuels Barry Zito?

Is it his desire to excel? Or the pressure of living up to a $126 million contract, the richest ever given to a pitcher?

Well, literally, what fuels Zito is a chocolate cherry muffin, one baked by an aerospace physiologist, to be precise.

Zito leaves nothing to chance in his preparation, and that includes his diet. In November, he started on a nutrition program formulated by Precision Food Works, a Manhattan Beach company founded by former NASA consultant Chris Talley.

Every other day this spring, Zito arrives at Scottsdale Stadium to find a large cardboard box at his locker. It says "refrigerate upon opening" in large block letters under the next-day air label.

Inside are frozen, vacuum-sealed containers of everything from blackberry custard to spinach flour pasta to mandarin Danish toast. Every ingredient of every preservative-free dish is weighed to the gram. The meals contain a balance of vitamins, nutrients, fat, protein and carbohydrates customized to Zito's specific body chemistry.

And then there are those muffins.

"So good," Zito said. "It's one of my favorite things."

I wonder if this guy bakes the muffins? Maybe Talley becomes successful enough that anyone can buy his food, not just rich athletes.