What was the first food eaten in space by a US astronaut?

The first food eaten in space by a US astronaut was applesauce.

On February 20, 1962, NASA astronaut John Glenn ate applesauce during Friendship 7, the Mercury mission that made him the first American to orbit Earth. The applesauce was packed in a toothpaste-like aluminum tube, allowing Glenn to squeeze it into his mouth without loose crumbs or floating liquid entering the spacecraft cabin.

Glenn’s meal was deliberately simple because NASA was testing whether humans could safely swallow and digest food in weightlessness. He also consumed a puréed beef-and-vegetable mixture and glucose tablets with water. The experiment helped show that eating and drinking were possible in orbit, although early space food was far less appealing than modern astronaut meals.

A common mix-up involves sandwiches: astronaut John Young famously smuggled a corned-beef sandwich aboard Gemini 3 in 1965, several years later. Another distinction is that applesauce was not the first food eaten in space by any human; Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov ate during Vostok 2 in 1961. Applesauce is the canonical answer for the first food eaten by an American astronaut.