Featured Image Credit: Alexander Spatari / quantic69 / Getty
As space agencies like NASA prepare for longer missions, one of the challenges they face is ensuring the astronauts stay well-nourished.
Expert researchers believe they've found the most nutritional meal for astronauts during their space journeys.
Burning more calories means you need to bulk up to compensate and make sure you're not undernourished.
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And it turns out that the perfect meal might boil down to a simple vegetarian salad - sorry, meat-lovers!
Astronauts in space burn more calories and require more calcium due to the effects of microgravity on their bones.
This unique dietary requirement has caused scientists to explore food options that are not only nutrient-dense but also feasible to grow in a spacecraft environment.
Astronauts aboard the spacecraft are continuously finding ways to grow potential crops in outer space.
There have been some fun moments in this quest. For instance, one proud NASA scientist who was growing space crops at the ISS accidentally let a tomato lose, sending it into an orbit around the station - a good few months before it was located.
The aim is to create a meal that is nutritionally sufficient while being palatable, considering the limited resources available in space.
A team of multi-institution researchers evaluated 10 different space meals, covering up to 102 different crops. Their primary focus was on two factors: the nutritional fulfilment of a male astronaut's daily needs and the sustainability of growing the meal’s ingredients in terms of water, fertiliser, time, and space requirements.
Both vegetarian and omnivorous meals were tested in the study, but the vegetarian combination came out on top.
The winning meal includes soybeans, poppy seeds, barley, kale, peanuts, and sweet potatoes, with the option of adding sunflower seeds.
Though not entirely sufficient in providing all micronutrients, the researchers noted that a supplement could bridge this gap.
Back on Earth, the meal was tried out in a focus group of four people - two men and two women - and the feedback received was very positive.
One participant compared the meal to a 'gourmet salad' whilst another requested a second serving. Another participant stated they 'wouldn’t mind eating this all week as an astronaut'.
However, more research is needed to investigate other factors such as diets for female astronauts perhaps, or whether age and various health levels affected the diet needed.
Further research could even look into the intriguing fields of lab-grown meat and fortified 'space drinks,' just so the astronauts don't miss their carnivorous diets too much.
