Quality Evaluation of Dried Cooked Rice as Space Food

To deeply explore the solar system, it will be necessary to become less reliant on the resupply tether to Earth. An approach explored in this study is to convert hydrocarbons in asteroids to human edible food. After comparing the experimental pyrolysis breakdown products, which were able to be converted to biomass using a consortia, it was hypothesized that equivalent chemicals found on asteroids could also be converted to biomass with the same nutritional content as the pyrolyzed products. This study is a mathematical exercise that explores the potential food yield that could be produced from these methodologies. This study uses the abundance of aliphatic hydrocarbons in the Murchison meteorite (>35 ppm) as a baseline for the calculations, representing the minimum amount of organic matter that could theoretically be attributed to biomass production. Calculations for the total carbon in solvent-insoluble organic matter (IOM) represent the maximum amount of organic matter that could theoretically be attributed to food production. These two values will provide a range of realistic yields to determine how much food could theoretically be extractable from an asteroid. The results of this study found that if only the aliphatic hydrocarbons can be converted into biomass (minimum scenario) the resulting mass of edible biomass extractable from asteroid Bennu ranges from 5.070 × 107 g to 2.390 × 108 g. If the biomass extraction process, however, is more efficient, and all IOM is converted into edible biomass (maximum scenario), then the mass of edible biomass extractable from asteroid Bennu ranges from 1.391 × 109 g to 6.556 × 109 g. This would provide between 5.762 × 108 and 1.581 × 1010 calories that is enough to support between 600 and 17 000 astronaut life years. The asteroid mass needed to support one astronaut for one year is between 160 000 metric tons and 5000 metric tons. Based on these results, this approach of using carbon in asteroids to provide a distributed food source for humans appears promising, but there are substantial areas of future work.

show abstract

Qualities of rice-based home meal replacement products upon microwave cooking

Seong¹,

Kim²,

Cho³

et al. 2022

Korean J. Food Preserv.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The physicochemical characteristics of five types of rice-based home meal replacement (HMR) products (instant rice, doshirak, kimbab, frozen fried rice, and freeze-dried rice) were measured before and after microwave cooking, and principal component analysis (PCA) was performed. HMR products contained grains from 8.42 to 8.72 mm before and after the microwave cooking. The amylose content and water absorption index (WAI) ranged from 20.10-23.15% and 0.50-2.87%, respectively. Frozen fried rice showed high amylose content but low WAI, and dry rice showed low amylose content but high WAI. There was a change in the moisture content of freeze-dried rice: moisture increased from 1.3 to 60.3% after cooking. The rehydration rate of freeze-dried rice was about twice higher than that of other HMR products, while instant rice showed a low rehydration rate. The texture profile's hardness and cohesiveness respectively were 306.1 g/cm2 and 47.9% before cooking, but 209.6 g/cm2 and 66.0% after cooking. The lightness value decreased from 72.5 to 68.9 after the microwave cooking, while there was little change in the lightness value of instant rice, and that of the frozen fried rice decreased. PCA revealed that, microwave cooking apparently affected WAI and rehydration rate in the freeze-dried rice yellowness in the frozen fried rice, and stickiness and lightness in the instant rice, respectively.

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Quality Evaluation of Dried Cooked Rice as Space Food

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

Long term food stability for extended space missions: a review

Long term food stability for extended space missions: a review

How we can mine asteroids for space food

Qualities of rice-based home meal replacement products upon microwave cooking

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About