Know What You’re Eating on the Plane
Everything tastes completely different on a plane than it does on the ground. How can this be explained? Are airline chefs really that bad at cooking, or is there more to it?
Take it easy, airline chefs—it’s not your fault. First of all, it’s incredibly difficult to heat up a pre-prepared meal with only a microwave at your disposal. Soggy and limp food is therefore simply unavoidable when an entire plane full of hungry passengers needs to be fed. But the bland taste your pasta has at an altitude of ten kilometers can also be explained scientifically. Airline Lufthansa investigated this phenomenon.
Less sensitive senses
The German airline soon discovered that your senses work less effectively in the air. Sour, spicy and bitter flavors all hold up perfectly well, but you recognize salty and sweet flavors up to 30 percent less. Even wines that would taste heavy on the ground suddenly seem fresh and fruity in the air. The reason: your body is not accustomed to the environmental conditions on a plane. Both the air pressure and the humidity are completely different.
A noisy airspace
Another explanation is the sound of the enormous aircraft engines. There is a direct link between the amount of unpleasant noise you hear and how tasty your meal seems. The same flavors that disappear due to differences in altitude and pressure are also negatively affected by loud noises: salty and sweet.
A Michelin-starred dish at a high level
Conclusion: even a Michelin-starred dish would not come fully into its own when you’re sitting on a plane. There are, however, steps an airline can take to improve its guests’ culinary experience. Singapore Airlines, for example, has assembled a team of nine top chefs. Gordon Ramsay leads the team, and every four months they create a new menu for passengers. The meals are taste-tested in a special pressure chamber and adjusted step by step to the conditions during flight. How do they deal with the reheating problem? Products are heated separately, so, for example, the chicken doesn’t overcook and your potatoes don’t dry out.
So are you really going for that culinary experience at a (literally) high level? Then get your ticket from Singapore Airways. Several other luxury airlines also offer their first-class travelers headphones to combat the noise pollution. Add a little extra sugar and salt, and you’re good to go.
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