Why we drink (and eat) differently on a plane
Do you also always order drinks on a plane that you don’t normally drink? Such as tomato juice or ginger ale? There’s a good reason for that, according to Sherry Ross, a physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
Many people think that drinking ginger ale and tomato juice has a calming effect on the stomach. “In reality, it’s a learned idea, often passed down by a mother or grandmother,” says Dr Ross.
Placebo
It’s not the ginger that makes us feel better, but ‘nostalgia’ combined with a placebo effect. So if you have an upset stomach, make sure you have a piece of ginger root with you and suck on it for a while. The same applies to tomato juice. Tomato soup is comfort food for people who are (or have been) ill. And we associate tomato juice with that without realising it ourselves.
Losing taste
Besides choosing what we think is good for us, there’s another reason why we make different choices during a flight. High in the air, our sense of taste changes. We can taste only thirty percent of salty flavours, and herbs also lose their flavour.
In the dry air on planes, we smell much less, while our sense of smell determines eighty percent of our taste. The only flavours that remain unaffected under these circumstances are sour and bitter. That’s why food or drinks with strong flavours are popular on board. Chips, for example. And therefore tomato juice and ginger ale.
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