Astronaut food has become more and more inventive in recent times. NASA has itself spent more than $400,000 to develop the right kind of food that can be sent with their daredevils up there, and beef jerky rates highly on the list.
Beef jerky is currently being thought to be one of the best human foods in space right now. Its preparation is a reason for that. This food isn’t cooked in the usual way. It is prepared by drying it out highly, almost removing all the moisture that is present in it. Due to that reason, beef jerky becomes a virtually non degradable food.
This dry food is quite crispy and makes a crunchy noise when bitten. It has almost no weight at all and hence you could carry it easily wherever you go. And if you suddenly get hungry, you can have just a bit of this beef jerky and you will find that to be quite satisfying.
Beef jerky is also a readily mixable food with other food substances. It can be easily added to soups and can be cooked in various ways to make it a more conventional food. But most people like to chew on beef jerky as it is because of its great taste.
One of the most prime advantages of beef jerky is its high nutrition value. This food has an amazing amount of protein in it and has very little fat despite being derived from red meat. Hence, astronauts who consume beef jerky are directly taking in a healthy amount of protein and keeping themselves away from fat which could be quite lethal to them up there in space since they cannot physically exert themselves much there.
There is another great advantage. Chewing on beef jerky is a delicious pastime. This food is normally hard to chew. Hence you would need to take a part of it and keep it in your mouth for some time till it becomes succulent enough to take it in. this is a great experience every time and its wonderful taste really spreads throughout the mouth. That’s one of the reasons why astronauts love their time with their jerky.
You could keep beef jerky for a long time without any special storage. It doesn’t decompose at all. This is ideal for astronauts who could be up there in space for very long periods of time. Beef jerky will still remain fresh and edible. And, whenever you are hungry, all you have to do is to munch on a little bit of your jerky.
With all these great benefits, it is easy to see why beef jerky has been chosen as the best food for astronauts. That’s yet another feather in the cap of this already very popular food.
Louise Servage constantly writes about Beef jerky and is quiet fond of road kill beef jerky it is one of her favourite foods.