Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Food fads look silly thirty years later, but I vividly remember wanting to eat the food that astronauts eat. I had never heard of Space Food Sticks , but I wanted a glass of Tang every morning. Even now, as an adult, I prefer the taste of Tang to real orange juice.

Here is a video from Pillsbury advertising Space Food Sticks:

The technical description of Space Food Sticks doesn’t sound appetizing:

A battery of food scientists at Pillsbury, lead by Dr. Howard Bauman, whipped up an energy stick that was actually edible. The long chewy stick could slide into an airtight port located in an astronaut’s helmet to provide essential nutrition in case of an emergency. Pillsbury released a commercial spin-off of their cosmic creation, imaginatively dubbing the product Space Food Sticks.

Described as a “non-frozen balanced energy snack in rod form containing nutritionally balanced amounts of carbohydrate, fat and protein,” the original energy bars came in several flavors including caramel, chocolate, malt, mint, orange and the ever-popular peanut butter. Aficionados will recall that the Space Food Sticks were wrapped in special foil to give them an added space-age appearance.

When you hear people who ate Space Food Sticks as a child, however, you might think they were a delicacy:

I remember eating them with many a lunch brought to school – peeling away the weird silvery paper (not the slick Mylar of today!) and biting into the weirdly homogeneous cylinder of snack! I can remember the flavor(s) even now. – Seattle,WA

We simply refered to them as “Space Sticks.” They were only around when I was a child, but my brother and I considered them a special treat – so much so we’d ask for them as Christmas presents. We were never allowed to eat more than two at a time but I always wanted more. Chocolate was my favorite flavor. – Pleasant Hill,CA

I had never heard of them before, but at only 44 calories, there was worse food that children could obsess over.

The food fads right now seem to be whole foods: whole grain, whole vegetables, whole wheat… I wonder if thirty years from now if any kids will be as excited about whole grain Captain Crunch cereal as kids were about Space Food Sticks and Tang.

Via: Retro Futurism: The Future Will Taste Like Space Food Sticks