{"id":81754,"date":"2015-01-14T09:28:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T09:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=81754"},"modified":"2015-01-14T09:28:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T09:28:38","slug":"food-taste-different-planes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/01\/food-taste-different-planes\/","title":{"rendered":"Why does food taste different on planes?"},"content":{"rendered":"
When your taste buds are way above the clouds, your normal sense of taste goes right out of the aeroplane\u2019s window. Katia Moskvitch investigates why this happens, and how airlines are trying to find ways to get our appetites back on track.<\/p>\n
If you think the food airline companies serve up is bland or unappetising, it\u2019s not necessarily their fault. Essentially, you leave your normal sense of taste behind at the airport departure gate. Get on board a plane and cruise to a level of thousands of feet, and the flavour of everything from a pasta dish to a mouthful of wine becomes manipulated in a whole host of ways that we are only beginning to understand.<\/p>\n
Taste buds and sense of smell are the first things to go at 30,000 feet, says Russ Brown, director of In-flight Dining & Retail at American Airlines. \u201cFlavour is a combination of both, and our perception of saltiness and sweetness drop when inside a pressurised cabin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything that makes up the in-flight experience, it turns out, affects how your food tastes. \u201cFood and drink really do taste different in the air compared to on the ground,\u201d says Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University. \u201cThere are several reasons for this: lack of humidity, lower air pressure, and the background noise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dryness and low pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n When you step on an aeroplane, the atmosphere inside the cabin affects your sense of smell first. Then, as the plane gets higher, the air pressure drops while humidity levels in the cabin plummet. At about 30,000 feet, humidity is less than 12% \u2013 drier than most deserts.<\/p>\n The combination of dryness and low pressure reduces the sensitivity of your taste buds to sweet and salty foods by around 30%, according to a 2010 study conducted by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, commissioned by German airline Lufthansa. To investigate this the researchers used a special lab that reduced air pressure\u00a0 simulating cruising at 35,000 feet (10.6km) \u2013 as well as sucking moisture out of the air and simulating the engine noise. It even made seats vibrate in its attempts to mimic an in-flight meal experience.<\/p>\n