But imagine that you lived in a place with no refrigerator or freezer, and you had no access to a grocery store stocked with your favorite fresh fruits and veggies. In that case, you pretty much have to rely on packaged foods even if you’re one of the healthiest, fittest people on the planet. For astronauts living on the International Space Station, this is a daily reality. MORE: Is Your Healthy Food Actually Radioactive? The only food aboard the ISS is like packaged foods on steroids. We’re talking vacuum-sealed, sterilized, dehydrated, and powdered nuggets of nutritional goodness. Other than the no refrigeration problem, space food has to be as light as possible to keep mission costs low—the heavier the rocket, the more fuel it takes to launch. And it’s no surprise that cosmic adventurers probably aren’t stuffing their faces with packaged foods while planted on Earth. It takes 18 months of grueling physical and mental training to be qualified to leave Earth’s bounds. Anyone who can make it through that is used to eating their Greek yogurt, lean protein, fruits, and veggies. But as disgusting as freeze-dried shrimp cocktail may seem, astronaut packaged food isn’t as nutritionally defunct as most boxes and bags you pluck from grocery store shelves. NASA employs a team of highly trained food scientists to develop meals that will keep astronauts strong on their journeys, some of which last 6 months or longer. Of particular concern are sodium and iron intakes. Living in microgravity (because as any true space nerd knows, “zero-gravity” doesn’t actually exist) leaves astronauts with a continuous stuffy nose, making foods high in salt and other spices more appealing to their drowsy tastebuds, Vickie Kloeris, NASA’s manager of food systems for the ISS, told Smithsonian Magazine. Floating through the cosmos also affects astronauts’ red blood cell counts, meaning they need less iron than those of us on Earth. Both too much iron and too much sodium can lead to health problems like bone loss and toxicity. MORE: Watch This: Astronaut Makes Tacos in Space After astronauts choose their menus (about 5 months before the planned launch), food scientists and nutritionists like Kloeris analyze their selections for optimal nutrition content to avoid those problems and make recommendations to fill any holes. Foods like dehydrated mac and cheese and thermally stabilized barbeque brisket fill those holes. And even though they might not sound appealing, modern-day astronauts are lucky compared to those who explored the cosmos at the beginning of the space program. Instead of sucking pureed bananas from a tube, today’s astronauts choose delicacies like tacos, burgers, and peanut butter and honey sandwiches, which have all been heated to temperatures that kill bacteria and then packaged in airtight pouches. It’s essentially like eating all of your food out of a flexible can. But the future of space food is looking even brighter, with fresh produce now completely possible. Astronauts aboard the ISS—including Scott Kelly, the first American astronaut to spend an entire year on the station—recently grew and ate lettuce in space for the first time. The lettuce was grown using red, blue, and green LED lights, similar to the way vertical farming works. An earlier crop was flown back to Earth and tested to make sure the leafy greens were safe for human consumption. And after the lettuce was given the green light, all systems are a go for future space farming. So, before long, astronauts could be eating just like we do—packaged foods be damned.
