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Flávia Fayet Moore is a nutritionist who examines how oyster mushrooms grow in space.
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She teamed up with NASA and SpaceX to send the first mushroom into orbit in a 3-day flight.
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Fayet bogs says that mushrooms could help us get to Mars due to their nutritional advantage and the rapid growth cycle.
This sentence is based on a conversation with Flávia Fayet Moore, a nutritionist and the founder and CEO of Foodiq Global, a nutritional research company. On March 31st Spaceex The company, which travels from Florida, plans to send its mushroom experiment into space as part of a partnership with NASA and SpaceX. This essay was processed for length and clarity.
About two years ago I thought we should try to grow mushrooms in space.
I have examined food, culinary and health advantages of mushrooms in the past seven years.
There are many cool things about mushrooms that make you suitable for the task.
First, mushrooms grow very quickly. I explain everyone and it blows my head to learn that sweet brown mushrooms – these small cap fungi you see in the shop – are the same mushrooms. They are the same mushrooms, but Portobless are harvested only two days later than the little ones. They grow so quickly.
The end-to-end harvest cycle for mushrooms is about 45 days. This is not very long, so we don’t wait 190 days later to harvest something like other plants. You also need minimal resources such as water. You don’t need sunlight to synthesize because you are not plants and you can thrive in really small rooms. Not to mention that they are very resilient and are really good at surviving different changes in their surroundings.
And they are completely edible. You can consume the entire fungus so that there is no waste. So let’s assume that they grow tomatoes, they do not eat the whole plant so that there are plant waste and they have to find out what they should do with it. The nice thing about mushrooms is that when decomposing you can reuse the inevitable plant waste as part of the substrate in order to grow so that you can close this loop in agriculture. If you have ever went to kindergarten and have received a mushroom compost that is treated with mushroom substrate, you know that it is really nutritious, and it is great to grow more plants.
The most important thing, however, is that NASA priority prioritizes in front of nutritional supplements because it exists the benefit of the food of full value food. In nutritional science you know that when supplementing it is not the same effect in the body as nature that is intended with the combination of nutrients. Mushrooms are therefore a complete source of food for very high diet; They have nutrients in our food groups, from grains to vegetables to nuts and seeds to fish and meat.
Astronauts receive 1000 ius vitamin D a day to maintain bone health, and mushrooms can of course produce vitamin D if they are exposed to UV light, just like humans. Basically, we can receive 100% of our vitamin D requirements with only 100 grams of mushrooms.
There are also studies that show that they can add less salt to mushrooms, which is really important, since the amount of calcium that is exhausted from the bone in space. So it is a counter measurement to have a lower diet.
And if that wasn’t enough, what is, what is Really Cool about mushrooms is that they are very rich in Umami. This is the fifth basic taste, such as acidic, sweet, salty or bitter – and in contrast to the other flavors, Umami seems to be well kept in a space environment.
It’s like an airplane. Have you ever ordered a wine on a flight and then tried the same thing after landing? It tastes different. Everything is steamed. It is the lower humidity and higher cabin pressures that change the tastiness. Not with mushrooms, you still get the Umami taste.
Here it becomes particularly interesting for long -haul flights that we need to get to Mars. Can you imagine eating thermostabilized, dehydrated foods for five years? I can’t.
The most important thing about food is that food is so much more. It is a fundamental part of our culture and our survival and our mental health. At the international space station, the astronauts love together at dinner and eat and exchange food. It is nostalgic, but it is also a comfort. They are isolated, they are far from home. The food becomes a way to connect with each other, but also with their culture, family and things they love.
That’s why we look at space plants.
This month, my company works with NASA and SpaceX to complete the first study to grow mushrooms in space. If everything goes according to plan, we may have only unlocked a key element of the long-distance space ride, which helps us to reach Mars.
On March 31, we send our mushroom experiment to the room on a SpaceX Fram2 flight, which is leaving from Florida, to see how they grow. The flight is three and a half days and since it basically doubles every day, we hope that we will see something off. Since we do not send them to the ISS and wait months to get them back, we will actually achieve results relatively quickly and hope to publish our results in autumn.
My daughter will be with me on the starting day. When I talked about sending mushrooms into space a few years ago, I never thought I would come here. I am just so proud to show her that if you have a dream, you just have to continue and use your passion to help us get to a new border.
Read the original article about Business Insider
