Science Reveals Why Airplane Food Tastes So Bad 388
Hugh Pickens writes "At low elevations, the 10,000 or so taste buds in the human mouth work pretty much as nature intended. But step aboard a modern airliner, and the sense of taste loses its bearings. Even before a plane takes off, the atmosphere inside the cabin dries out the nose. As the plane ascends, the change in air pressure numbs about a third of the taste buds, and at 35,000 feet with cabin humidity levels kept low by design to reduce the risk of fuselage corrosion, xerostomia or cotton mouth sets in. This explain why airlines tend to salt and spice food heavily. Without all that extra kick, food tastes bland. 'Ice cream is about the only thing I can think of that tastes good on a plane,' says Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. 'Airlines have a problem with food on board. The packaging, freezing, drying and storage are hard on flavor at any altitude, let alone 30,000 feet.' Challenges abound. Food safety standards require all meals to be cooked first on the ground. After that, they are blast-chilled and refrigerated until they can be stacked on carts and loaded on planes. For safety, open-flame grills and ovens aren't allowed on commercial aircraft, so attendants must contend with convection ovens that blow hot, dry air over the food. 'Getting any food to taste good on a plane is an elusive goal,' says Steve Gundrum, who runs a company that develops new products for the food industry."
The good old days... (Score:4, Interesting)
PanAm used to cook four-course meals on their flights. What happened?
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Lawyers.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Insightful)
they removed the kitchens to cram in more people
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The good old days... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Idea to not serve food on these flights may be going too far. Because even a 1 hour flight without food/drink does get painful. I remember one time Going from Pittsburgh to Baltimore the flight was too rough that they couldn't serve drinks, (well it was worse the turbulence happened mid way so half of the people got drinks) I was quite miserable as I was very dehydrated at the time, and all I wanted was some normal water.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Funny)
You got dehydrated in a hour? Who are you, Sponge Bob Squarepants?
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Insightful)
You were doing okay until that last statement. It's a popular myth that drinking a soda will dehydrate but studies have shown that the water loss due to the small amount of caffeine in a typical soda is greatly outweighed the water provided by the soda. So if you drink multiple sodas all day long you won't end up dehydrated due to the caffeine (though you may gain weight from all of the 'empty' calories.)
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a person who drinks only sodas all day, everyday, is more dehydrated than someone who drinks the same volume of just plain water everyday
Then they'd still be thirsty, they'd drink more and so make up the difference. So "same volume" is a bad assumption. And "less hydrated than someone else" isn't the same as "insufficiently hydrated" which is what "dehydrated" means.
Personally when I used to drink soda I never found it to quench my thirst very well, so I drank quite a bit more of it than I would water.
And I drink a *lot* of water. Different people have different hydration needs. My throat starts to feel parched after an hour, often less,
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Interesting)
This will be changing soon. The 787 is the first airliner to be pressurized to 6,000 feet and the follow-up projects in the Yellowstone portfolio will have similar environments. It will also have a higher humidity level (up to 15%, around four times higher than other planes) because the carbon fiber will not corrode in the same way as current metal structures. It's still relatively dry air, but it won't be the moisture vacuum that are the current airborne environments.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Funny)
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15 percent humidity!? I'd consider that to be high as my normal humidity ranges between 7 - 12 percent. Anything over 20 percent makes me sweath like a leaky faucet. Of course, I live in the desert and have adjusted quite nicely to the dry air.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Funny)
Good god man! Can you imagine the horror of being stuck on a plane full of people after they've all eaten curry and burritos? The only thing that food will come out of just fine is the microwave.
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Well PanAm aren't around anymore - you have Southwest and Ryanair now :-)
Re:The good old days... (Score:4, Informative)
What happened?
Deregulation. Once airlines were deregulated, airlines were free to give customers what they wanted (low prices) instead of what the government thought they wanted (extremely expensive food).
I have read that serving a meal on an airplane costs the airline about $50. I would rather save $50 on the ticket price and bring a sandwich and an apple in my backpack.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Funny)
Do they still let people get on planes? What if one of them is a terrorist!?
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The good old days... (Score:4, Informative)
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Last year I flew into, within, and out of the USA. I had no problem bringing a regular 500 mL bottle of water onto the planes.
I just made sure it was empty when passing through security, then filled it up at a water fountain while waiting to board. Security did see it and didn't care to say or do anything about it.
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Re:The good old days... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent down.
Serving a meal on a plane costs in the area of $10 (just because YOU read it, don't make it so). Most of the cost is do to deregulation (you need a franchise license from the particular airport, to operate on premise, and airports typically only issue one-- ah, free enterprise!).
Please try again-- on another forum.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Interesting)
Serving a meal on a plane costs in the area of $10
The airline may pay $10 to the caterer for the meal. But that is only a small part of the cost. There is the cost of the ground crew to transport and load the meal. There is the cost of extra crew to serve the meals. There is the extra expense of running kitchens at 30,000 ft. There is the extra cost of buying planes that have those kitchens. And probably the biggest expense: there is the lost revenue from the passenger seats displaced by the kitchens and storage space for empty trays.
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The peanut farmers successfully lobbied management.
Then when peanuts were proven to be fatal to those with allergies, and banned after the government was lobbied, the potato chip lobbyists stepped in, and the premade-sandwich-maker's union had a few things to say as well.
In the meantime, the people kept demanding cheaper and cheaper air fares, until the airlines finally gave up on subsidized meals and just started gouging people the same as a sports arena with a game on. Captive audience, extortionate
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened?
Flights that normal people could afford.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then normal people got on the airplane and everything went down hill from there.
Seriously. It used to be coat and tie. Now it looks like "People of Walmart".
Re:The good old days... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. You can pay top prices for these flights, and you're still on those same planes. Fact is, unless you rent a private jet, you can't buy your way to a pleasant flight any more.
Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the era of internet searches for flights basically the only thing you compete on is price and times. Everything else only matters to business customers who are contented with champagne and seats which don't jam their knees into their chins.
And safety regulations, which, despite the talking points of some political parties, do exist for a reason.
When the experience of travel matters (say a cruise) you can pitch a more expensive product than the next guy as a different experience that justifies a higher cost. But people view the air travel portion as an inconvenience (which I suppose it is) that must be endured rather than a value added part of the experience. No one likes flying anymore, and if you still do, there are some TSA screeners who will adjust your excitement to approved levels.
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Re:The good old days... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the price of Fuel is much higher, and more people are demanding to travel. And the price of any luxury adds a lot to the cost of the flight.
Think about it, A full kitchen where you can put 30 more people per flight. Would add about $200 to the price of your ticket, Just due to the space. Then there is hiring people to do the work, store the extra food... It adds up.
As customers we decided that we would prefer cheaper rates and be treated like cattle, then to pay a lot more and treated like a human.
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>PanAm used to cook four-course meals on their flights.
Airlines still do. Buy a business class ticket on Newark to Singapore, a 19-hour flight and the world's longest commercial flight, and the equivalent in time of a clipper trek from Newark to San Fran back in "the good old days." You still what you pay for.
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FYI, "Clipper" was the nickname for Pam Am's service. My family was United Crew-- we still have a flight map signed by Bob Hope from a quick Newark->Denver->Las Vegas->L.A. tour mounted on the wall, so 19 hours is indeed about the flight time from the prop-plane, in-the-clouds & turbulence era.
And in that era-- the big difference was that you couldn't get above the wind toss, so could wind up being buffetted at pretty much any time-- they darn well did everything they could to make flying
Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to 8k (Score:5, Informative)
The modern airliner cabin is pressurized to a pressure altitude of 8,000ft.
That means that as you go from airport altitude to your cruising altitude the cabin only increases
in pressure to feel like 8,000ft.
That's below the 10,000ft where the OP claims cotton-mouth, and below the 14,000 where you
can't breath, and well below the 35,000 OP cites as cruising altitude.
See: http://tinyurl.com/brmpv3j [tinyurl.com]
The original article is just pure hogwash.
E
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed, some of the best peanuts I've ever had were on airlines.
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Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:5, Funny)
Southwest does have some good Honey Roasted Peanuts.
Careful. They were processed in a facility that processes nuts.
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:5, Funny)
If cottonmouth tales away your sense of taste, then why does everything taste so much better after a big doob?
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Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:4, Informative)
The cabin is pressurized to 8,000 feet but with very dry air from outside. Humidifying the air would require carrying many extra gallons (hundreds?) of fresh water.
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The cabin is pressurized to 8,000 feet but with very dry air from outside. Humidifying the air would require carrying many extra gallons (hundreds?) of fresh water.
Or, cramming in a few hundred mouth breathers who are stoked on either starbucks (intensifying the dehydration) or fiji water (intensifying rehydration and wallet depletion)... Then again, the real substantial humidity bump happens after they all start complaining about their lousy in flight meal so i can see where the article has a point.
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If you use a heat exchanger to warm incoming air with outgoing air, it should be possible to recover and reuse the moisture.
Alternatively, you could just give up and give people military rations.
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...just give up and give people military rations.
One MRE should be enough to frighten the entire plane into fasting.
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Honestly the new MREs aren't that bad. I've had worse airline meals.
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:5, Interesting)
Between ROTC and 10 years in the Guard I've experienced the last four generations of MRE. The late 80's / early 90's version was worthy of all the disdain ever heaped upon them. They've gotten progressively better though. Other than a residual slight metallic tang to the meat, current generation MRE's are by and large no worse than most fast food (which is not to say that they're good, just not nearly as awful). The vegetarian one's are actually better IMO, the lack of meat completely removes the metallic taste and they always have fruit and granola bars as extras. The fruit is no worse than any canned fruit and the granola bars don't suffer from the heat as much as a lot of snacks.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you want a regular diet of the things; but living on them for a couple of days isn't unpleasant anymore. No worse than a travel day where you're forced to eat more fast food than you'd like.
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and they come with chemical heater now. Activate the heater with a quarter cup or so of water and no more cold/frozen food. The second and third generation had the heaters as an optional extra item the unit could get along with the MRE; but now they're packed inside the bag. There's less chance of a screw-up or sadistic supply sergeant that way.
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:5, Informative)
The vast majority of air "leaks" out through cabin pressurization valves near the back of the plane - it's designed that way since air has to be let out in order to let fresh air in (as well as to not keep the cabin at the same altitude as the departing airport - to climb up to 8000' requires releasing air).
Correct. The pressurized air for the cabin comes from the jet engine's bleed air (located after the compressor section). It's quite warm because of the compression (from -30-50C to +50-60C), so it needs to be cooled down via air conditioners to levels humans would prefer.
It's also one reason (among many) to keep the cabin at 8000' and why air quality has declined - using the bleed air saps power from the engine.
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:4, Informative)
That's correct in the vast majority of cases. The 787 being an exception, using dedicated electrically driven air compressors instead of bleed air to supply the cabin.
The problem with outside air at 35K feet is that it is cold. So its absolute humidity is very low. Warming it up lowers its relative humidity even lower.
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The cabin is pressurized to 8,000 feet but with very dry air from outside. Humidifying the air would require carrying many extra gallons (hundreds?) of fresh water.
As I understand it, the main reason for the dry air is that it reduces metal fatigue (via oxidization). Planes made of carbon fiber (e.g. the 787) should (or at the very least could!) have less dry air.
OP talked about HUMIDITY (Score:2)
OP says that the ten thousand taste buds (i.e. notice how there was no mention of pressure at that point) work fine as long as there is humidity. Whether at 8 thousand feet or 35 thousand feet, what the OP says is that the really low humidity inside the plane (to guarantee its structural integrity on the long run) is bad for the taste buds and thus for the taste of food.
The article may be crap, but not for the reasons you point!
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The 787 will have a more humid cabin. Will be interested to see if it makes a difference in the food.
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I live at 6500 ft.
Food tastes great!
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The original article is just pure hogwash.
That's what I came to say. I try to bring food on-board whenever I'm aloft for multi-hours, most recently National coney dogs(yes I always bring extra for my seatmate/s discretion). The vote was unanimous, they tasted awesome at 30,000ft. If at all possible, I suspect they tasted better at altitude, but I am extremely biased when it comes to coneys.
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Yup. It's bullshit.
1. Food in the business cabins still tastes how it should.
2. Food I've taken on board still tastes good,
3. The food budget per meal, per seat in economy is around $1-$2
1 and 2 put the lie to the premise, 3 is just the reason why. Price competition has driven airlines to cut every last cent they can. Me, I'd rather have an option to pay ten bucks more for my ticket and not get fed recycled rat-shit.
Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to (Score:4, Interesting)
I, for one, have eaten quite well on an airplane. I flew Turkish Air to Istanbul and Beijing, and I must say their food is awesome. The Chinese airliner I flew afterwards also had decent food.
Good food on an airplane isn’t an impossible feat. My taste buds work just fine on all altitudes I’ve tried them on. Food quality primarily depends on how little the airliner is willing to spend on it.
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and below the 14,000 where you can't breath,
This is incorrect. People in good health can breathe just fine at 14,000'. You will definitely feel more aerobically challenged for a given level of exertion. Many unacclimatized people will experience mild altitude sickness (headache), and a few will get sick enough that they need to descend immediately for safety.
People routinely summit Kilimanjaro, which is 19,000', without supplementary oxygen -- in fact, I've never heard of anyone using oxygen at that altitude. The altitude where it's really impossibl
Sure blame the taste buds... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sure blame the taste buds... (Score:5, Funny)
The usefulness of your analogy gets a score of 2 pencil sharpeners out of 89.4 green elephants.
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Really now? (Score:2)
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But it's not that kind of "duty" free if you catch my drift...
But Wait... (Score:3, Funny)
What a load of BS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a load of BS! (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it hard to believe that because of high altitude, the food is going to taste bad
Winter in Denver above 5000 feet simply can't be that much different than a pressurized cabin, yet people in Denver don't starve to death.
Some of my best meals have been eaten while wearing snowshoes on the side of a mountain/hill. Builds up an appetite, I'm having fun, etc.
Re:What a load of BS! (Score:5, Funny)
There's a slight difference between 5000 feet and 30000 feet.
Likewise, there's a slight difference between the outside and inside of the cabin at 30000 feet.
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They keep the air pressure in ISS higher than they do on an airliner. Pressure in ISS is equivalent to sea level pressure [wikipedia.org] while an airliner is only pressurised to the equivalent of 8,000 ft.
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Astronauts in space partly lose their sense of smell: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/23/147294191/why-astronauts-crave-tabasco-sauce [npr.org]
Yeah, I bet! (Score:2, Funny)
'Ice cream is about the only thing I can think of that tastes good on a plane,' says Marion Nestle
And only chocolate ice cream at that, eh Nestle?
Psychological effects (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought it was psychological effects? Being molested by federal agents, being treated like a terrorist, being herded like cattle at a slaughterhouse, mind numbing boredom waiting around, late of course, sounds like a fun date, what could possibly go wrong? Doesn't everyone else look forward to a full body cavity search before a gourmet meal?
Also only a tiny fraction of my travel, on ground or in airplane is for fun. Mostly its because I have to meet someone at work, training, fix something, somebody far away croaked, etc. Its almost never involves good news. Flying home because granny died last night is going to kind of ruin the dining experience regardless what they do. Or traveling to the worlds most boring, tiring, and pointless meeting while in a bad mood ruins the dining experience. I have traveled for fun, its just that I make 5, maybe 10 business-related trips for each vacation.
Re:Psychological effects (Score:4, Informative)
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If that were true, then food would taste lousy in every pub or sports bar & grill in existence.
Wait, on second thought, you might be on to something!
Different airlines (Score:4, Informative)
Whenever I fly Singapore, Thai or other Asian airlines the food is fine. However, on Western airlines.......Delta, KLM, BA, etc, the food sucks. Different philosophies maybe?
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Transatlantic flights on my own dime I go with the cheaper airlines and get small food snacks, when on someone else dime I go with the higher priced airlines, all economy, and get better food.
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This is even true for a Delta ticket that uses an AirFrance plane. The Air France flight has great food and flight attendants that are under 45 years old.
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It's a need for a different marketing demographic.
US airline consumers shop purely by price.
Asian airline consumers shop by airline food quality and stewardess attractiveness, and are willing to pay for these qualities (as idiotic as it is). It's not unusual to hear Asian people talk about preferring one airline to another because of these two factors, and they don't blink an eye even if they have to pay an extra $200USD for these perceived differences.
Excuses (Score:3, Funny)
olds (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and? This has been known for many years. Most airlines have special kitchens for their chefs to work in which artificially create in-flight atmosphere (pressure, humidity, etc.) so the chefs can taste what their food is like to the passengers.
I don't see any recent breakthroughs mentioned. So what the heck is this blogging nonsense doing on the frontpage?
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Ginger-ale at 30,000' (Score:3)
Nothing tastes better. I'm not entirely sure why. But it's never quite as good back on the ground.
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Like everyone else commenting on the article i've found that any food i bring with me tastes pretty much the same as it does on the ground. The airlines may have trouble _preparing_ fo
Who needs airplane food to taste good (Score:2)
Not being a blue blood accustomed to first class travel, I see airplane food strictly as something to sustain me through a long flight, and relieve the boredom.
On shorter range flights (such as across much of Europe), only drinks are necessary, and anything is vastly better and more convenient on the ground, even in airport restaurants. Short layovers when connecting flights may be a problem, though, so it's good to be able to get a meal sometimes. Low cost carriers know all this, so they offer in-flight fo
Cheapskates! (Score:5, Insightful)
The tastebud stuff sound like pathetic excuses..
Solution (Score:2)
Keep the plane pressured then (Score:2)
I know this is easier said then done and they have reasons for skimping on the pressure. BUUUUT it would be more comfortable if the pressure slowly transitioned from the take off pressure to the landing pressure with no consideration at all for the exterior pressure.
I'm assuming the reason they don't fully pressurize the plane is that it puts strain on the airframe or the cabin or it's hard to keep the plane pressurized. If that's the case just consider making that a feature in future plane designs. Passeng
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Presentation is just as bad (Score:2)
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food is bland on planes (Score:2)
Aegean Airlines (Score:2)
Aegean Airlines serves (largely) excellent food. There has been the odd exception, but generally, their food is really quite good in my experience.
The issue is the amount of money the typical airline meal costs the airline to produce. I can't locate the page at present, but recall that among domestic US carriers, Alaska Air spent the most on its food. From what I recall (take that with necessary salt), the overal industry average was below $2 per meal. The average first class meal cost something like $5
uh, no just no... this is drap. (Score:2)
I typically get take-out the night before (Chinese, Indian). Tastes just like it does one the ground-- usually with anyone around me complaining that they didn't bring their own. The OP is crap.
I don't buy this at all... (Score:2)
Back when I was flying a lot still, the airline food tasted like crap. The fruit or snacks that I'd bring in my bag? Tasted just fine.
If it was some weird thing with the tastebuds wouldn't my own food taste weird?
All of you saying "my sandwich tastes just fine" (Score:3)
I see a bunch of posts stating:
The summary (not even the article!) makes it clear it's more than just the altitude/pressure. There's cabin humidity, for starters.
cabin humidity levels kept low by design
As well as all the packaging, preprocessing, etc., that goes into the cabin food.
Re:Old news? (Score:4, Informative)
I was just about to post the same thought. I remember the show, it was about a "crazy" TV Chef Personality trying to tackle places where food was notoriously bad.
Chef in question - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston_Blumenthal [wikipedia.org]
Show in question - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.channel4.com%2Fprogrammes%2Fhestons-mission-impossible&ei=Q4hwT8GrEsii8QPNhay_DQ&usg=AFQjCNFV9XA0VmmjP41FvOGX8fjKBTKZig [google.co.uk]
I can't find any links that go into detail about what the program found out, but this isn't a bad place to start: www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CEoQtwIwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.terminalu.com%2Ftravel-news%2Fheston-blumenthal-proves-that-british-airways-can-improve-inflight-food-standards%2F6728%2F&ei=ZYhwT83XNsr_8QPLmJ2_DQ&usg=AFQjCNGkMupkhlsjgyVT2VRbmVFHAThPGw
All of the reasons in the summary are gone over - dried out senses, pressurised environments etc. except Heston went a step further and discovered that certain flavours aren't as affected by the different atmosphere. This show aired over a year ago.
Old news indeed.
Re:Alternatively: sweets, raw veg and fruit (Score:5, Insightful)
For flights up to about 5 hours, most do indeed go without as these flights only offer a drink and your choice of overpriced candy bars. After that, people start to get antsy for some free meal of some sort (more so if they have some form of diabetes which you can be sure makes up a good sized contingent on any flight these days.) Why the airlines don't just offer meals that are intended to be cold (a nice chicken salad, a cold-cut sub sandwich, wrap, etc.) is beyond me.
When I travel, I just buy one of these from the dozen or so places in any airport that vends them and don't worry about what (if anything) is going to be served in flight. The airlines really should just forgo any hot meal kind of options completely and just give food vouchers at the gate for any flight that included a meal, and the passengers can just go get the food they actually want and bring it with them.
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Indeed.
I'd rather them take the cost off the ticket (somewhere around $50 a person apparently) and bring my own cheaper yet much better food on board or just not eat (I can go a surprisingly long while before I actually get uncomfortably hungry).
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That was deliberate, AC, very deliberate. Alas, I have two decent trouts in the fridge, time to bake them tonight!