3 Astronaut Hacks For Healthy Eating That Will Benefit Your 9–5 Life Too

Meal Prep for fun

Let’s put the most obvious one first.

While astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have a refrigerator as well as an oven, microwave and even an ISSpresso coffee machine (that is the official name, needless to say it was invented by the Italian Space Agency), they still can’t cook up there. Food is delivered every 2 months. Most of it in cans, pouches or vacuum bags.

But the astronauts actually get to choose some of their food.

NASA for example runs its own food lab. There, the astronauts in training can taste and evaluate meals and decide what they’d like to eat in space. Specialized chefs even help them recreate meals from their home countries or regions in a space-suitable way.

This way, the astronauts can even look forward to their meals.

Takeaways for you:

Even if you only manage to cook once a week: Use it as a chance to try new things, offer your taste buds new experiences. Make at least a little bit more so your lunch will be a no-brainer the next day. If you find something you like a lot, freeze it for a special occasion (or a super-stressful day) and reward yourself with this tasty meal that you looked forward to all day long.

Packaging for purpose

Yes, in the beginning it was all tubes and the astronauts squeezed pastes into their mouths.

Then came dry food in pouches that could be rehydrated in space. This method is still in use today.

By now, thermostabilized food has become a favorite among many astronauts. Actually, that’s roughly nothing other than a fancy word for tin food. Readily-prepared full meals that undergo a heat treatment to kill off bacteria and are then filled into air-tight containers.

How does packaging help with healthy eating in busy everyday life?

1. There is good tin food out there. Before you grab junk food, get a few of those tins and store them at home and at your workplace/in your bag so that you always have a nutritious meal at the ready and aren’t even tempted to go for the “bad” stuff.
2. There are good pouches for private use. You can fill them with hearty, pureed stews or mashes, put them in the microwave for a minute and then squeeze the contents in your mouth. Might look strange, but this way, you can consume a whole, nutritious, tasty meal in just a few minutes, be full for hours and avoid food coma because food in this form is lighter and easier to digest.

Almost anything goes

In total, astronauts training for the ISS can select from over 100 items of food and drink.

Of course, healthy, nutritious options take the top spot. Alcohol is forbidden. No surprise either. But here’s a short list of items that are neither super-healthy nor that suitable for a weightless environment:

• honey, ketchup, mustard, peanut butter
• chocolate cake & chocolate bars
• cookies (first cookies baked in space in December 2019)
• lemonade, orange juice

Even fresh produce is a bit of an usual food choice here because it has such a short shelf life but high risk of being contaminated with bacteria.

Still, fresh fruits and vegetables get sent to the ISS to boost morale among the crew.

In total, each astronaut may consume at least 2,500 calories per day.

For us earthlings, this means:

Even if you have a nerve-racking, stressful, high-risk job and success depends on your physical and mental fitness, you may — and shall — still have a treat here and there. Just make sure the nutritious foods always account for at least 80 % of your total intake.

Summary to go

• Prepare meals whenever you can; this gives you the chance to try new things, makes meal choices no-brainers and gives you something to look forward to.
• Find packagings that keep food fresh for long or allow you to consume food in it’s lightest, easiest to digest way to keep you full on the go and avoid food coma when you need all your energy for whichever kind of work.
• Restrictions are not the way to go, regardless of how much your success depends on your physical and mental fitness. At least 80 % healthy and nutritious, the remaining 20 % max may (and shall) be treats.

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Sources:

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-do-astronauts-eat-space#:~:text=Today%2C%20astronauts%20eat%20a%20varied,ketchup%20and%20mustard%20are%20available.