From beef steak to cheese pie to ice cream — astronauts often have a gala time in space

Aug 7, 2021

By: Mona Pachake

​Traditional Indian food in space

In Feb 2021, ISRO’s Gaganyaan team announced that the team of Indian astronauts will travel next year to space with a variety of Indian foods like biryani, khichdi and pickle along with shahi paneer, aloo paratha and chicken korma. So, what all do astronauts eat in space?

Credit: BCCL

Eating in space

There are numerous challenges to eating in space, including low gravity conditions and getting the food from the package into an astronaut's mouth. Nutritionists also make sure that the food astronauts eat contains vitamins and minerals

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Calorie requirement

There are three meals per day, plus snacks that can be eaten at any time. There are more than 200 dishes on the menu. As per NASA, on an average they receive at least 2500 calories a day.

Credit: NASA

Vitamin D supplement

Since they don’t get to eat a lot of fresh fruits or veggies, vitamin D is consumed as supplementary capsules.

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Cereals and oatmeal

This type of food is preserved by removing the water content — on adding water, the food returns to its original, edible form. This form of dehydration is also known as freeze drying or rehydratable food.

Credit: National-Air-and-Space-Museum

‘Yes’ to puddings, but packed

Food can be heat processed, cooked and packed for immediate consumption. This type of food can be stored at room temperature. Foods stored in cans and packed in cups like tuna fish and dessert pudding are good examples.

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Meat is not an exception

Beef steak and smoked turkey are the only products that are cooked and packed in flexible foil pouches and sterilised by ionising radiation so they can be kept at room temperature. These are called irradiated products.

Credit: NASA

Love for spice

Up in space, people’s tongues don’t make enough saliva for their taste buds to work as well as they would on Earth. That’s why astronauts love the strength of flavour that comes from spicy food.

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Freeze-dried ready-to-eat ice cream

Not only pudding, but astronauts enjoy different desserts like ice cream and cream cheese pie. These are quickly frozen to prevent a build up of large ice crystals, which maintains the original texture of the food and helps it taste fresh.

Credit: Wikipedia

No to bread and cookies

Astronauts have to say a big goodbye to cookies and bread in space. All the little crumbs that fall from these kinds of foods might go into the spacecraft’s zero-gravity conditions and can get stuck in the little space buttons, which can be a huge problem.

Credit: BCCL

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