Why food taste changes in flight?

Food tastes worst in flight

Image from:- pixabay.com

Have you ever tried a food in flight? I think you surely did. Sometimes you will taste that food worst in flight. And we blame the airline for that thing. But truth is the airline is not responsible for that thing. 

Food tastes worst because you lost your one thing as you go higher in aircraft.

The thing that we lost as we go high in the air is some part of our sense of taste & smell. In aircraft's fuselage temperature is usually low & as we go higher air becomes thinner & atmospheric pressure reduces. Also, as we go higher humidity in the air reduces. It is even less than 15%. It dries out the air. This causes we lost some part of our sense of smell & taste. It is as same as we are having cold, in cold we lost our some part of the sense of smell. That is, we lost 30% of our sense smell & taste according to a 2010 study conducted by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, commissioned by German airline Lufthansa.

It is surprising to know that we lost our only sense of sweet & salty tastes. Other tastes such as sour, bitter, almost remain unaffected.

Other reasons responsible for changing food taste are engine noise. The study suggests that in loud noise food tastes less salty & less sweet. But in flight this effect of reducing taste is much lower. But food seems more crunchier.

Also one of the reasons is reheating the food in flight. As it is not allowed to use flames or microwave in flight so it is not possible to prepare food in aircraft. So food is prepared on the ground & then stored in the aircraft. Food is served hours later of its preparation. So it is reheated causes lost in some part of taste.

But one thing is good in all this,
Tomato juice or soup tastes better in flight than on the ground. Hence lots of passengers in flight ask for tomato juice or soup in flight.

So next time you go by flight, try tomato soup or tomato juice and experience its taste.



Thanks for reading!