Japanese instant snack noodles hope to dump their junk food status and soar to the higher gastronomical rank of space cuisine.
Nisshin Food Products Co said yesterday it will work with the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) to develop instant ramen noodles for astronauts participating in the International Space Station project.
"It has been the wish of the founder of our company, who invented instant ramen noodles some 44 years ago, to develop space food instant ramen," said Shinichi Kuwata, a spokesman for Nisshin, best known for its Cup Noodles brand of the instant soupy dish.
"He want to make it the ultimate instant noodles," he said.
NASDA needed nutritious, tasty and familiar food for Japanese astronauts as the space station project would require them to stay in space for several months at a time, said NASDA spokesman Yoshihiro Nakamura.
"Japanese astronauts who have already been to space have told us they wanted to eat ramen noodles. With Nisshin proposing to develop space food ramen, we decided to conduct a feasibility study for noodle eating in space," he said.
Astronauts must be able to consume the noodles without slopping strands or spilling drops of soup on their clothes or equipment, Nakamura said.
"We do have space food spaghetti. Pasta is cut into small pieces and put in a gel-like sauce. Astronauts use spoons to eat it to stop anything from their dish floating out in the no-gravity environment," Nakamura said.
Nisshin's noodle scientists are also studying ways to enhance the noodle's taste, while maintaining low salt content, Kuwata said.
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