Everything You Never Thought to Ask About Astronaut Food

Days before his return to Earth in 2008, NASA astronaut Daniel Tani told reporters he couldn’t wait to do something very ordinary after spending four months in space.

“I’m looking forward to putting food on a plate and eating several things at once, which you can’t do up here,” Tani said.

Plates are pretty useless on the International Space Station, where food—along with everything else—floats. Mealtime in microgravity usually consists of thermo-stabilized or freeze-dried entrees and snacks in disposable packages and pouches. Astronauts heat them up in an oven or add water before chowing down with a fork straight out of the package. The space station doesn’t have refrigerators or freezers to keep food fresh, so there’s no such thing as leftovers.

Despite the almost alien process of eating, astronauts consume many of the foods they would find back home: scrambled eggs, spaghetti, chicken teriyaki, broccoli au gratin, oatmeal with raisins. During the