The most unusual salad of 2025
Somewhere about 400 kilometres above Earth, two astronauts recently stood over a tray of freshly harvested leaves, reached for a bottle of oil and vinegar, and had a meal together. No restaurant, no recipe, no elaborate plating — just kale and wasabi mustard grown aboard the International Space Station, picked and eaten within minutes.
The moment was captured in a video shared on X by Indian-origin NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who is currently on his first spaceflight as part of Expeditions 74 and 75 aboard the ISS. His fellow astronaut Jessica Meir lifted a leaf, paused to smell it, and said quietly that it "smells like earth." Menon's reply landed like something from a short story: "I miss earth. But luckily you can see it."
It is a small exchange, but it carries a kind of weight that elaborate food content rarely does.
What was actually growing up there — and how
The vegetables — kale and wasabi mustard — had been growing aboard the station for roughly a month under NASA's Veggie plant growth system, an ongoing research programme studying how plants develop in microgravity. The two astronauts harvested the greens, examined the leaves closely, tasted them plain and then with accompaniments including a wasabi mustard cream that Meir described as particularly sharp.
The science crept into the meal almost naturally. While looking at one of the leaves, Meir noticed small new leaves appearing from the surface of the main leaf — an unusual growth pattern she wondered might be linked to the microgravity environment. It is exactly the kind of observation these experiments are designed to produce. Earlier ISS research on lettuces and other vegetables has already shown measurable differences between plants grown in space and those grown on Earth.
Menon's mission involves considerably more than tending a small garden. He arrived at the ISS on 14 July aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft and is expected to spend around eight months in orbit. His work includes research into semiconductor crystal production, medical ultrasound, blood flow in microgravity and bioprinting. On 6 August, he and Meir completed a spacewalk lasting 6 hours and 23 minutes to prepare a power channel for future solar arrays — his first ever, her sixth.
Why this matters for a food audience in India
At first glance, kale harvested in zero gravity feels a long way from the food conversations we have here — the sourcing debates at farmers' markets in Bengaluru, the seasonal produce that shows up at Mumbai's Crawford Market, the slow food movements taking root across Indian cities. But look a little closer and the concerns are surprisingly familiar.
What the ISS plant experiments are really probing is a question that resonates deeply in a country where agriculture, climate and food security are never far from the public conversation: how do we grow food in conditions that are not ideal? For long-duration missions to the Moon or Mars, astronauts cannot rely on packaged food deliveries — they will need to grow at least some of what they eat. The research into how roots orient themselves without gravity, how leaves develop differently, and how plants can be cultivated in closed environments feeds directly into a broader science of resilient food systems.
There is also something quieter at work in Menon's video. The smell of a fresh leaf was enough to make two highly trained astronauts pause and feel the pull of home. Food has always done that — connected people to place, to memory, to belonging. That truth holds whether you are floating above the Pacific Ocean or sitting down to a meal in your own kitchen.