If you’re not training for the space program, why are you eating packaged meals?

If you’re old enough to remember Tang, a powdered orange flavored drink mix introduced in 1957 and soon thereafter advertised as “the drink of astronauts,” you’ll remember a time when eating packaged “food-like products” was a complete novelty. This was of course something you’d only do if you had absolutely no access to REAL food – e.g. in outer space

Let’s be clear, this product was not especially healthy – but if John Glenn drank it on a Mercury mission, then people could overlook that fact and give it a try. Of course due to its high sugar content and the associated aura of space flight and science, kids like me loved it.

Looking back, this moment marked the start of the “Manufactured Food Marketed as Scientific Ingredient Mixture” era, where the specific benefits of a particular nutrient or the simple practicality of a product (e.g., lasts for years without spoiling) was used as a “cover” to justify its artificial nature, and to obscure its lack of nutritional value.