How to Fix Airplane Food
In a Saturday Night Live sketch that aired on April 18, 1992, the host of the evening, comedian Jerry Seinfeld posed the question, “What’s the deal with airplane food?”
For nearly 30 years, this joke has been repeated and parodied over and over as a cliche of observational comedy. It has also become a long standing gag when commenting on the poor quality of food on most commercial flights.
As a chef, food is and has always been a big part of my life. As someone who is also fond of traveling, I can attest to the blandness and general poor lack of quality in the food that is served on planes.
So what is it that makes food on planes so bad? Believe it or not, it’s not because of poor ingredients or for lack of trying.
In-flight meals have been around almost since the beginning of commercial aviation when the airline Handley Page Transport offered passengers a packed lunch during their London to Paris flight back in 1919.
For decades, several commercial airlines followed this same practice until United Airlines changed the game. In 1936, they installed the first onboard kitchens, making hot, freshly prepared meals a possibility.
Up until this point engines on planes were simply too weak to be able to carry the added weight or even produce enough energy to power a functioning kitchen. Any meals served on board had to be cold such as crab meat cocktail, egg salad, or cold fried chicken to name a few. Now with the ability to heat things up in the air, airlines began offering hot and fresh meat that was prepared on board.
Suddenly, food became a marketing strategy. Airlines were selling their passengers something more than flying to their destination, they were selling them a luxury experience. Advertisements would boast that not only were you going to fly in total comfort, you would also be feasting on some of the best cuisine money can buy.
In 1978, the US government enacted the “Airline Deregulation Act.” Before this law passed, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) determined which airlines got to fly which route and set the price for each route, often times at an inflated value.
With the CAB now gone, airlines were able to set their own, more competitive prices, making air travel more affordable to the masses. In order to keep operating costs low, a lot of cost-saving measures were implemented by the airlines including cramming more seats into the plane and, obviously, doing away with expensive meals prepared fresh on board.
The major complaint with airplane food is not that it tastes bad, it’s just that it it’s bland and tasteless, but that is not entirely the airlines’ fault. The fault lies in your tongue and the environmental conditions inside the plane itself.
Studies have shown that your taste buds do not work as well at high altitudes, and since most plane cabins are pressurized to an equivalent altitude of 8,000 feet, anything you eat will have it’s flavors muted.
Studies have also shown that low-humidity environments also affect your sense of taste. Since planes have to cycle in air from the outside in order to provide passengers with life sustaining oxygen, air at high altitude has very little water vapor in it, thus humidity levels inside of a cabin can be as low as 20%. For comparison, the Sahara desert averages a humidity level of 25%.
By combining high altitude and low humidity, your flavor receptors are so turned off that you have the equivalent sense of taste as someone with a cold.
Charles Spence, an experimental psychology professor at Oxford University, concluded a study showing a link between constant loud noises, like the hum of a jet engine, and diminished sense of taste. Spence’s research also concluded that in order for food to taste more like it would on the ground, airlines would have to add 30% more sugar or 30% more salt onto each dish. Unfortunately, since airlines do have to cater to large numbers of people, doing this would limit passengers with diabetes or poor-kidney function from eating anything.
All is not lost however. Fortunately for us as consumers, airlines have once again been vying for luxurious supremacy over its competitors by offering ever opulent first class products as well as by having good tasting in-flight meals.
Chicken curry served in Business Class on Singapore Airlines
In order to gain credibility for their food, several airlines have hired celebrity chefs as consultants for the development of their onboard meals; Singapore Airlines hired Gordon Ramsay, Air France brought in the Michelin-starred Guy Martin, and Qantas has Aussie native Neil Perry just to name a few.
A lot of money has been pumped into researching how to make food taste better on a plane, and fortunately the Fraunhofer Institute thinks it has the answer. A 2010 study commissioned by Lufthansa revealed that the flavor compounds in cinnamon, soy sauce, oranges, ginger, tomatoes, chili, and curry have a lot of umami, and are still easily detectable by your tongue even at cruising altitudes.
Fortunately, these umami rich foods lend themselves very well for mass production and distribution. It’s not too different from banquet style dining as you have to ensure that food is as hot for the last diner you serve as it was for the first. Making sure the food isn’t dry is also important. How do you go about this? Any chef will give you a similar answer: Sauces.
Jambalaya and rice served aboard United Airlines’ domestic premium product.
