Rebuilding bone and cartilage in astronauts
Calcium, magnesium, b vitamins, the right fats, the right hormones which involves the right fats.
Bone marrow is fatty.
Whales dive to very deep high pressure environments and have fat stores to facilitate that.
See Treating tendons and ligaments plus:
Gelatine. Read Waldorf salads on nutrient dense.
Instead of liquid food, maybe gelatin salads?
They would need work, but one contains pineapple and one contains cottage cheese. That's fat and protein and potentially enzymes.
Ricotta bread plus below that apple and spinach salad is potential ingredients for a Waldorf salad style gelatine salad
I ate ricotta in Germany. European style ricotta is not sour. It's just curds after removing the whey -- the liquid -- from whole unpasteurized milk and contains healthy fats and protein.
I've eaten MREs. Blech.
My understanding is astronaut food is all pureed so you aren't dealing with crumbs etc.
Why not some bite sized stuffed shells or something? Snack sized, meal level nutrition?
I don't know what you do if it's a pureed version of MREs, no heating, but:
Pemmican and jerky are old ways of storing meat by drying. You need to make sure it's all bite sized with no crumbs.
Beef and chicken are nasty rubber when microwaved. Other than jerky, I typically go with vegetarian meals in sketchy situations with limited aspects of a modern kitchen.
Complementary pie and mjedra from Diet for a Small Planet are BOTH BETTER as leftovers and can be eaten cold. Make it filling for ravioli noodles and like parboil it or something.
Figure out the ramen noodles with diced veggies and a shot of steam instead of bowl of soup solution proposed for travel food.
It doesn't have to be a shot of steam. You need a means to rehydrate everything with minimal liquid and accounting for zero g. See multiple pieces by me about cold prep ramen and figure out rehydration while keeping it in bite sized blobs.
Maybe look into Asian traditional wrappings, like nori I think that's what it's called. They use sticky rice wrapped in seaweed for sushi.
Focus on bite sized, non crumbly delivery methods. Vegan diets are challenging to get enough nutrition. Not true with vegetarian. Read Diet for a Small Planet, get a list of foods with B vitamins.
If you can do jerky and dried fish, it can be semi vegetarian and that's basically how most people have eaten for most of human history
Mjedra has no dairy. This doesn't have to be a new form of white supremacy under the rubric "no lactose intolerant astronauts."
Gelatine is not vegan. It comes from animals, mostly cows, pigs, fish.
Eggs are historically a primary source of fats and proteins in many cultures (Rome for example).
A reminder: ghee is not vegan and is lactose free, unlike butter. Clarifying butter makes it keep for 2 months without refrigeration and cooks off the milk solids, making it acceptable for lactose intolerant people. It's a healthy fat and can potentially be stored in plastic squeeze bottles so astronauts can ADD fats if needed.
Their diets are probably fat deficient and this is likely part of why they are experiencing bone loss.
You just need to figure out HOW it makes sense to add a squirt of ghee to space foods logistically.
If you can make moist, non crumbly breads work, squirting ghee into a cut in the bread may work.
That form of corn bread is more cake like, less crumbly. Potato bread may be less crumbly than wheat bread.
The right starch plus enough egg, you may be able to develop breads that are acceptable for zero g. Lots and lots of breads include dried fruit, herbs, nuts, cheeses, etc. It's potentially a means to make bite sized meal foods.
Posted because it starts as stuffed noodles, unfortunately it becomes fancy lasagna. I don't typically mix beef and cheese because iron and calcium combined in the same meal interfere with each other and you get less of both, BUT food for thought:
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