Baked beans on Mars

This is one of a series of posts looking at what we might eat on Mars, where most food would have to be shelf-stable, tinned or freeze-dried. You can find other posts on this topic under the Martian Meals tag.

NASA has a team of researchers working out how to feed the astronauts on a future Mars mission – it’s called the Advanced Food Technology (AFT) project. In 2012, they announced that they had 100 recipes ready to go. Due to problems preserving meat and dairy for long enough, they’re all vegan. 

Beans and pulses of all kinds are staples in the vegan diet, but for a long time they didn’t appear on NASA’s list of astronaut foods. Neither did cabbage, sprouts and broccoli. Why? Because those foods cause flatulence, and methane emissions could be an issue in space!

NASA changed their mind at some point, though. Baked beans were one of the items served in an “All American Meal” enjoyed by the last space shuttle crew in 2011. Tim Peake has been quoted as saying they are part of the breakfast menu on the International Space Station.

According to this Heinz video, their UK factory produces more than 3 million cans of baked beans EVERY DAY. That’s more than 1 billion cans a year. Heinz baked beans are one of the UK’s most popular foods!

I don’t particularly enjoy baked beans; in this house, we tend to only use them for bean feast. In the past we’ve stuck to Heinz as a reliable brand, but since we’d like to be good Martians, we’ve been exploring more ethical alternatives.

Heinz beans are made from haricot beans (Phaseolus vulgaris, which we call French beans). Hodemedod’s Baked British Beans are made from broad beans (Vicia faba AKA fava beans), which have been grown in the UK since the Iron Age. They don’t have the same texture –