One of my items on the cube list is trying food for astronauts. It’s not freeze-dried astronaut ice creams (which I still love), but real foods designed for astronauts to eat in space.. Specifically, I hope to get some prawn cocktail, but beggars cannot be electors, as they say. I will take anything.
But how are astronauts ’food designed? In space, astronauts face enormously different environmental, physical, and mental situations that we don’t have to worry about on Earth. Astronomy actions how food is chosen and what aspects are key to becoming space food.
“We have teams that need to act and be healthy at these extremely high levels for extreme-intensity situations,” said Grace Douglas, senior scientist in NASA’s Advanced Food Technology research group at the Johnson Space Center. “Foods affect all aspects of physiology and foods can make you very healthy or they can make you very ill.” It seems, then, that they take the diet of astronauts very, very, very seriously. There is probably no lunch in orbit.
Proper nutrition is key to making sure astronauts ’bodies stay healthy and to preventing bone and muscle loss during deployment. In order not to lose too much body, astronauts must eat between 2,700 and 3,700 calories a day. If the diet plan does not cover all the basics, astronauts take dietary supplements to boost needs like B12, omega 3 fatty acids and iron. In short, if food is healthy for you down here, it’s still healthy for you up there.
After decades of perfecting their knowledge of nutrition and food technology, NASA dietitians have begun to move away from supplements and nutrient planning and more toward a diet where astronauts get these nutrients directly from fruits and vegetables. Dietary supplements cannot provide phytochemicals, which are biologically active compounds that are obtained from fresh produce. But there is the problem of the loading room. All these fruits and vegetables take up space.
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The solution? Lyophilization and thermal replica sterilization, a process used in the canning industry by sterilize food after it has been packaged by heating it. Not only does it reduce the amount, but it also keeps the food shelf stable for extended periods of time. The packaging resembles the tuna packets you can get in the canned fish section of the grocery store. Part of this meal must last up to five years for long-range orbit missions.
Then, of course, there is the question of taste. The food should taste decent, to say the least. Astronauts he can not eat food strangely monotonous, day after day. Textures are very important: no one wants to eat pasta all day. A new freeze-dried item that has been a huge hit is a freeze-dried mango salad that includes a crunchy nut.
Sending products on supply flights is good and all, but the ultimate goal is to try to create a self-sustaining food source. So NASA has been experimenting leaf vegetable cultivation in space, which seems like natural progression. It has been successful with greens and even flowers, so adding fresh stuff as a supplement to your nutrient-dense diet could no longer only be healthy for our favorite space travelers, but also delicious. And it is one a brilliant strategy to combat homesickness through fresh food that you can get below.