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Nutritionist Christine Chénard has a habit of embarking on big adventures, like climbing mountains across the planet.
Recently, though, she’s been setting her sights on something higher.
“Up there,” she giggled, pointing to the sky. “It’s really amazing!”
Chénard is the co-founder of Happy Yak, a company in Cowansville, Que., that turns fresh food into freeze-dried gourmet meals. She found a way to remove most of the water and weight while preserving the flavour.
“Usually vegetables will lose about 90 per cent of their weight,” she explained, “so a 10 kg vegetable will be 1 kg after freeze-drying. So it’s really, really light.”
Such meals are ideal for expeditions where weight is a factor. It’s why one of her latest creations has caught worldwide attention — a shrimp curry meal that was carried on the Artemis II mission on board the Orion spacecraft by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and the crew.
“It’s making us feel very proud,” Happy Yak production manager Marc-André Lebel told Global News.
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“Making food and sending it to space — it’s something we’re really proud of here in Cowansville.”
The shrimp curry is identical to the one they sell to the public except for a slight change in the formula — it needs warm water instead of boiling water for rehydration before consumption.
“Up there, we cannot bring the water to boiling point because it could be dangerous,” Chénard explained.
The company’s worldwide success first took off in 2018 when another Canadian astronaut, David Saint-Jacques, was issued four of Happy Yak meals on his trip to the International Space Station.
With the company’s help, another meal even served as a connection to his wife on earth while he orbited the planet — food from the astronaut’s wife.
“We freeze-dried his wife’s chili so he had nice comfort food,” the nutritionist grinned.
Chénard’s latest achievement has put her and her entire staff over the moon. She even attended the Artemis II launch and told Global News, “We participated in that mission and for me it was really something quite new and exciting.”
This life-long adventurer is now setting her sights on the mission to Mars.
“Yes,” she beamed. “It’s really amazing.”
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