History of space food. Part 1The first meal eaten in space was in the spring of 1961 by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin had a pureed meat in a squeezable toothpaste-style tube, followed by a tube of chocolate sauce.
The following year, John Glenn became the first American to eat in space, enjoying puréed beef with vegetables from an aluminum tube, among other edible delights.
Glenn and his fellow Mercury astronauts were given food in fairly unrecognizable forms. In addition to semi-liquids in tubes, NASA offered crushed cornflakes and crushed wheat molded into bite-sized cubes which were then coated in gelatin so they didn't crumble.
By the mid-1960s missions were up to two weeks, and eating was less experimental and more for nutritional sustenance. At the same time provisions had to be made with the smaller weight and mass constraints. According to NASA, the food system for each astronaut per day on Gemini 7 was limited to 0.77kg, which had to include food packaging.
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