Launching a man into space is a very difficult business. Among other things, a living being needs to relieve his natural needs, sleep, and eat. We will only consider the issue of food. What do the conquerors of the Universe eat, eat and will eat?
An excursion into the history of space food
The first person to taste food while in space is, of course, Yuri Gagarin. Although his flight lasted only 108 minutes and he did not have time to get hungry, the meal was planned and implemented.
Tubes, previously successfully tested in aviation, have become food packaging. Inside were chocolate and meat.
German Titov ate three times during his 25-hour flight. His diet consisted of pate, soup and compote. Returning to Earth, he complained that he was dizzy from hunger. Therefore, space nutritionists had to continue developing products that would be as nutritious and efficiently absorbed by the body as possible.
The first food for American astronauts was dried foods that had to be diluted with water. The quality of this food was not very good, so experienced astronauts tried to carry ordinary food into the rocket. So, once the astronaut John Young took a sandwich with him into space. It was extremely difficult to eat it in space, and bread crumbs scattered around the ship and turned the life of the crew into hell for a while.
Only in the eighties did American and Soviet space food become quite varied and tasty. In the USSR, three hundred names of various products were produced that were available to astronauts during their flight. Today the number has halved.
Technology of the present
The famous food tubes are practically not used in our time. The products are now vacuum-packed, before freeze-drying. This process is laborious, it involves removing moisture from frozen foods. As a result, 95% of nutrients, taste, natural smell, vitamins, trace elements and even their original form are preserved in food. Such food can be stored without any damage for five years, regardless of various conditions, including temperature.
Scientists know how to dry almost any food in this way, including cottage cheese. By the way, curd is the most popular product on the International Space Station. Foreign colleagues are lining up to try this unusual dish for them, which is included in the diet of Russian cosmonauts.
Modern food of the Russian cosmonaut
The Russian cosmonaut consumes 3200 calories per day. They are divided into 4 receptions. Daily food in orbit for one person costs about 20 thousand rubles. It's not just about the cost of products and manufacturing. For the most part, the price is because of the delivery - 7 thousand dollars per kilogram of weight.
Some dishes go down in history, new ones appear. For example, in recent years, the diet of astronauts has been replenished with mushroom soup, mixed hodgepodge, stewed vegetables with rice, Greek salad, green bean salad, canned poultry meat, chicken with nutmeg, omelet with chicken liver and others.
Long-lived space dishes are: Ukrainian borscht, beef tongue, entrecotes, chicken fillet, special non-crumbling bread. There is no refrigerator or microwave in the Russian part of the ISS, so our cosmonauts cannot eat quick-thawed foods, including fruits and vegetables.
Modern American Astronaut Food
There is a refrigerator in the American part of the ISS. This automatically makes their diet more varied and rich. Recently, however, Americans are moving away from semi-finished products and prefer freeze-dried food more.
In general, the space food of the Americans is no different from the Russian one. The only difference is the layout, but the products are the same. There are some specifics. So, Americans love citrus fruits more, while Russians love grapes and apples.
Food for astronauts from other countries
Space nutritionists from other countries create products that are completely unusual for us and equip their astronauts with them. The Japanese, for example, cannot do without soy sauce, noodle soup, sushi, and green tea.
Astronauts from China, by the way, eat almost traditional food - chicken, rice, pork. The French are considered the most unusual in terms of space food. In addition to everyday food, they take delicacies with them into orbit, for example, mushroom truffles. There was a case when Roscosmos specialists refused to bring a French astronaut to the Mir station with moldy cheese, as it could disturb the biological situation at the station.
All space dishes have an artificially increased level of calcium, since in zero gravity it negatively affects its level in the body. Nutritionists are trying to at least partially overcome this problem at the dietary level.
