Pop Tarts on Mars

Hello and welcome to Meals on Mars, your weekly imaginarium devoted to the future of food on Earth and beyond!

Kellogg’s Pop Tarts landed on UK shores in the 1990s. I ate one back then, but not again until last week. I have been wondering (as you do) what snacks astronauts of different nationalities would miss on a long-duration space mission. So Ryan and I have been trying a subscription to SnackSuprise. This UK company mails you snacks from a different country every month. The first one we received was from Australia, and you can read our thoughts here. 

Then came Portugal, and we were underwhelmed. There was a packet of tomato-flavoured crisps and some chewy fruit sweets that were nothing special. Ryan got the chewing gum and the peanut nougat as I don’t eat either of those. There was a chocolate bar with a passionfruit-flavoured filling (a personal favourite). However, neither of us liked it. The only place Portugal scored points was with a Vieira tartlet with a strawberry filling. Ryan said he wouldn’t be disappointed if those arrived on Mars!

The UK is currently experiencing supply chain issues due to a combination of Brexit changes, direct and indirect Covid impacts and the Evergreen Suez Canal debacle. So we had to wait a bit longer for our next box to arrive and (I won’t lie) I was disappointed when it turned out to be snacks from America. Not because Americans don’t make great snacks, but that we already get many of them in the UK. You don’t have to go too far to find Oreos and Reece’s Pieces, for example.

And then there were Cheez-It crackers and cheddar and sour cream Ruffles that immediately got passed to Ryan as they contain enough cow’s milk to make me feel ill. Ryan got the Butterfinger as well, as I’m not a