From carbon monoxide.. A company creates foods for astronauts

 The Air Company of Brooklyn has devised a way to recycle the carbon dioxide that astronauts exhale during flight into yeast-based nutrients into a protein drink intended to feed astronauts on long-duration missions into deep space.

"It's definitely more nutritious than Tang," said company co-founder and chief technology officer Stafford Sheehan, referring to the powdered drink made popular in 1962 by John Glenn when he became the first American to orbit the Earth.

Sheehan, who holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale University, said he originally developed his carbon conversion technology as a way to produce high-purity alcohol for jet fuel and perfume. The NASA-sponsored Deep Space Food Challenge encouraged Sheehan to modify his invention to produce edible proteins, carbohydrates, and fats from the same system.

According to Sheehan, the resulting single-cell protein drink, which entered the "NASA" competition, has the consistency of a whey protein mixture and tastes similar to "seitan", a food prepared from wheat gluten that originated in East Asia and is adopted by vegetarians as a vegetarian alternative to meat.

Beyond protein drinks, the same process can be used to produce other carbohydrate-filled alternatives to bread, pasta and tortillas. This month, NASA announced the victory of the patented IRMED technology, among eight other technologies, in the second phase of its food competition, with a prize of $750,000.