More than a chill pill: Swetha Sivakumar on freeze-dried foods

They’re shelf-stable at room temperature, retain texture, flavour. Freeze-dried foods were designed for space travel. See why they’re gaining popularity now.

The first freeze-dried meals came out of a NASA lab in the 1960s, but the first foods to ever be freeze-dried were potatoes, 700 years ago.

Chuno, as the preparation was called, fuelled the Inca army as it marched along the Andes, annexing new territories for a growing empire. The low temperatures and low air-pressure levels at those altitudes were ideal for this preservation technique.

Ages later, in 1909, biologist LF Shackell would replicate this process in a laboratory, refining