Kale and soy salad can feed astronauts – 01/13/2024 – Food
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Soybeans, poppy and sunflower seeds, barley, cabbage, peanuts and sweet potatoes. Together, the seven ingredients form “space salad”, a vegetarian dish developed by researchers to feed astronauts during interplanetary travel.
The list appears in an article published by scientists from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States in the journal Food, Science and Technology at the end of December.
In the study, researchers simulated in a computer model which foods are both nutritious and suitable for growing restrictions in space, such as quantity of water and reuse of matter.
The vegetarian meal with the seven ingredients fared best among ten combinations, which included options with chicken, beef and seafood. In it, there was macronutrients (carbohydrates, lipids and proteins) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) necessary for an adult man.
Astronaut nutrition is different from that of those on Earth. In space, human beings face constant vibrations, a feeling of being weightless, cosmic radiation and psychological pressures that affect the functioning of the body.
Therefore, the World Health Organization, WHO, recommends that astronauts eat almost twice as much carbohydrates and proteins as a human on Earth. But that doesn’t stop the dish from being replicated here.
Arranging the ingredients in a salad was the idea of Volker Hessel, researcher at the Space Resources Center at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He wanted the plant-based meal to be enjoyable.
“We were happy to transform vegetables into a common food format. I would call the product a prototype. A real food dish would need more advanced seasonings,” explains Hessel.
To guarantee the flavor of the ingredients, the researchers organized a tasting with two men and two women with experience in the space field.
With the exception of the potatoes that were cooked, the ingredients were mixed fresh, with olive oil and black pepper.
What did they say:
1st volunteer: loved the flavor, especially the barley and sweet potato.
2nd volunteer: found it sweet, similar to a gourmet salad.
3rd volunteer: The barley was dry, but I appreciated the sweetness of the sweet potato and the crunch of the combination.
4th volunteer: Didn’t like it at first, but repeated the dish.
“Our objective is to grow, harvest and mix all the ingredients in space. They can also be seasoned there”, says the researcher.
What does the computational model recipe look like?
- 63 g of soy
- 155 g of poppy seeds
- 223 g of barley
- 79 g of kale
- 25 g of peanuts
- 642 g of sweet potatoes
- 18 g of sunflower seeds
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