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Food is the most costly expendable resource for long space missions. Prepackaged food is massive and has limited shelf life. Bio-regenerative food production by higher plants entails large investments of energy, equipment and labor per unit of food energy produced, and has a lengthy recovery time in the case of crop failure. Direct chemical and hybrid chemical/microbial synthesis of food ingredients could furnish food ingredients such as glycerol, fats, functional proteins and even sugars from waste materials including CO2. Before such foods can meet NASA's objective of providing a safe, nutritious, balanced and palatable diet for space crews, two levels of development work are required: first, chemical and engineering research to address the issues of byproduct toxicity and purification, and second, food product research to develop a range of acceptable foods from microbial biomass fractions and/or glycerol.

Three distinct food system paradigms have been envisioned for long-term space missions. The Skylab, Mir and ISS food systems were based on single-serving prepackaged foods, ready to rehydrate and heat. Bioregenerative food systems, derived from crops grown and processed at the planetary station, have been studied at JSC and KSC. The US Antarctic Program’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Base uses the third paradigm: bulk packaged food ingredients delivered once a year and used to prepare meals on the station. The packaged food ingredients are supplemented with limited amounts of fresh foods received occasionally during the Antarctic summer, trace amounts of herb and salad crops from the hydroponic garden, and some prepackaged ready to eat foods, so the Pole system is actually a hybrid system; however, it is worth studying as a bulk packaged food system because of the preponderance of bulk packaged food ingredients used.