You need to be signed in for this feature. Expand View. Let's face it — food rarely tastes great on an aeroplane especially in economy. But why does what's served in the air taste so different to what you eat down on solid land? The number one reason that plane food tastes different is because you're consuming it at an incredibly high altitude — up at 39, feet your taste buds just don't work as well as they do on the ground.
With this in mind, airlines often test out their menus up in the air first before introducing them to their regular scheduled flights. Remember, aeroplane meals aren't just produced for one planeload of diners at a time, they're made for thousands of customers at once. And as everyone knows, mass-produced food often means a compromise on flavour. Travelling in economy means eating with plastic cutlery: never something to contribute much to your overall dining experience.
It also means that the food served has to be small or soft enough for it to be easily cut with such flimsy utensils. No wonder, then, that the vegetables are overcooked and the meat often beyond recognition. If you're travelling long-haul on a flight, chances are that by the time you're sat on the plane you've either been up since the crack of dawn or you've already done a full day.
You're tired, ready for a sleep, and then the familiar rumble of the trolley comes around; let's face it, when you're ready for your bed, nothing is going to taste particularly good. In order to make the food taste more palatable, airlines often ramp up the sugar and salt content in their food — unfortunately this often has the reverse effect, plus it contributes to any dehydration, which in turn makes things taste worse again.
Airlines want to make as much money as possible from their ticket prices, and spending less money on food is one of the easiest ways for them to do this. The result often means using the least expensive ingredients in meals, which in turn means meals are less interesting.
And, of course, cheap ingredients often taste cheap, whether you're in the air or on the ground. Food is reheated rather than cooked fresh There's no way around this unfortunately — food safety standards dictate that all airline meals have to be cooked on the ground. This means that the meal you eat on board is cooked, packed and refrigerated before it even reaches your plane, and once there it has to then survive being reheated in a convection oven.
The journey from start to finish can be such a long one that it's no surprise that your food doesn't taste much like you would expect. Preparing and serving tasty food for a few hundred people above the clouds is not an easy task. Because of food safety standards, all meals must be cooked on the ground. There the food is packed, blast-chilled, refrigerated, and finally must survive re-heating in the air. All of this would modify the flavour even if it was served at sea level.
To re-heat food on board, for safety reasons nearly all airlines use convection ovens, which blow hot, dry air over the food. Microwaves and open flames are not allowed, although the first induction ovens are now on the market. We design food with ingredients and packing we know can survive the long process between food preparation and delivery. Recently fashionable ways of cooking like sous-vide — where the food is cooked in a sealed plastic bag for a long time at a relatively low temperature - also help making in-flight food taste better, says Pam Suder-Smith, president of the International Flight Services Association.
So to improve the quality of airline food, airlines are beginning to experiment with testing meals in pressurised environments or aboard actual aircraft to replicate what passengers will experience.
Our executive chefs have mastered the art and science of adapting recipes to changes in how food tastes at high altitudes. So far, this proves true mostly for meals in first and business class, though. The umami notes of tomato juice seems stronger in the air than on the ground Getty Images. For First and Business class, Sky Chefs employ a team of executive chefs who work with airline customers — and use state-of-the-art kitchens, similar to those in a restaurant. Most meals are then placed in special carts and kept chilled until they are re-heated during the flight.
Airlines keep finding better ways to research food preparation at altitude. Singapore Airlines, for instance, works closely with their in-flight catering provider, SATS, which has a simulated aircraft cabin at their in-flight catering centre at Singapore Changi Airport, where meals are cooked and tested under low-pressure conditions. Some of our senses, however, are unaffected by altitude, especially the so-called fifth taste, umami.
It's not a common juice, like orange or apple. So why are so many people drinking it in flight? Put simply? Your taste changes while you're in the air. And there's a biological reason for that. If you grab a bite before your flight, you probably have an idea of what it will taste like. But once you're in the air, your sense of taste isn't the same as it is on the ground.
A lot of factors on the plane are all coming together to suppress your sense of smell, which makes up a large portion of our sense of taste.
Think back to the last time you had a cold. Remember how you couldn't taste anything because your nose was clogged up? When you have a weakened sense of smell, your perception of taste is reduced. So your in-flight nose is similar to your nose when you have a cold, but hopefully with less phlegm. Let's start with the cabin, which is extremely dry. Drier-than-some-deserts dry. The dry cabin dries out your nasal passages, which means your taste buds become less perceptive.
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