What Do You Eat in Antarctica? | Antarctic Extremes

Hi Terra, Caitlin and Arlo here. We have some sad news to share: Bija Sass, who is featured in this video, passed away. Bija was a wonderful person who, even in the short time we met her, left a very positive impression on us. In honor of her memory, we wanted to share this short article celebrating her life: to.pbs.org/3Y9tInd

The fact that you have to heat refrigerators in Antarctica is amusing me

“We caught a bird feasting on a placenta of a newborn seal.” ... that’s so metal.

I spent 378 days at the South Pole in 2019 thru 2020 and can confirm expiration dates are completely ignored. Granted, all the food down there is stored at -50F so it never really goes bad. I ate Nilla Wafers that expired in 2011, and they tasted exactly like a fresh box, amongst many other things. Unfortunately the ice cream had a diesel funk because the fuel arch was right next to the end of the food storage arch and the ice cream was closest. I think the only thing we had during our Winterover that wasn't expired was alcohol. That's brought in fresh each year. Priorities...

I had a friend who was a McMurdo cook for many years, and he even got to cook for a few weeks at the South Pole station. He was going to help me get a job there, too, but I still had my wisdom teeth (you have to have those removed before living in Antarctica) and I moved to Thailand, instead. I love living in Thailand, but I really regret not taking that opportunity to live at McMurdo for a season or two.

As someone who spent 13.5 months in Antarctica.... "freshies" as we called them, were always very desireable. We did have a small greenhouse that produced enough greens for salad once a week. Never looked forward to salad so much in all my life.

I didn’t realize there was a small town there. I thought it was just a handful of scientists living on soup and astronaut food. Thanks so much for the education this video provided.

It makes sense that Pizza would be so readily available and always fresh. Flour is VERY compressible, as is mozzarella cheese (ship it in whole logs and freeze it, keeps basically forever with little noticeable quality loss, same goes with pepperoni.

I'm surprised at how many people and how much infrastructure is down there, I thought it was just that lab on stilts!

"I ate an embarrassing amount of pizza" There is no such thing

"Add cheese, just add cheese, that's the trick" should be the new motto of Wisconsin. That humanity can go to the most inhospitable part of the world and bake bread, make a decent pizza and serve up chicken tenders is...honestly kind of inspiring. Just like those in not so developed countries, the people researching in Antarctica learn to make do with what they have. And it definitely beats the pemmican, cocoa, and in Amundsen's case fresh dog meat to prevent scurvy that affected Scott and his expedition.

The reality of how important food is in a harsh environment like this is exactly the same on the opposite side of the coin! I worked in the little sandy desert in the Pilbara region of western Australia and had summer temps of 50c+ daily and the food supply was amazing . Fresh fruit and vegetables along with everyone's favourite weekly dinner were all there ,as the working conditions were terrible and the only thing you had to look forward too was dinner and beer o'clock👍 the funniest sight was a McDonald's sign that said 2300km 👇

Just real quick: The "recycled food" is a little better than it sounds. "Repurposed food" is more accurate. It's like this: Say there is 40 pounds of pork chops that never went out to the service line. It is properly chilled by food service standards, and then the next day utilized to make pork green chili. The "leftover" food is just an excess from a previous meal that is utilized in an appropriate way! Anything potentially dangerous would be wasted without a hesitation. In a place like this, we don't want to waste perfectly safe food since it is such a difficult process to get it down here in the first place! The more you know! Good episode guys. It was nice to host you.

Hot sauce has gotta be the equivalent of cigarettes in jail.

The situation in Antarctica is far from what I've imagined. I'm actually amazed on how there are shelters that can accommodate A LOT of people out there. Thank you for this content! I'm enlightened.

I'm most impressed by whoever built the very first structure there, that couldn't have been fun to build a structure in such extreme cold

Imagine Gordon Ramsay just comes there one day and starts screaming at the chefs "ITS FUCKING FROZEN!!! ONLY THISNG THATS FRESH HERE IS THE PLACENTA ON THE SNOW!!!"

"Can you eat something pickled 100 years ago?" *Steve1989MRE already booking flight to Antarctica*

This is the most interesting video I've seen in forever. I had no idea the base was so large and.... normal! It's so much more human than I thought it was. I always got the impression that it was completely clinical and alien somehow, like being on the ISS or something. I would love to experience this!

A lot of times expiry dates are more "best by" dates... in many instances it's the amount of time the company has done shelf life testing (meaning let it sit as x temperature for y amount of time and then done a taste test/checked for bacteria growth or staleness or something). If they don't have data beyond 3 years or whatever it is, they just slap that date on it rather than risk the lawsuit even if it probably would be fine for even longer.