8. Airline Food

It was back in 2014 that I first got to thinking about the food and drink while in the sky. Sitting on yet another long-haul flight when my laptop battery finally died, I ended up watching the cabin attendants slowly wheeling the drinks trolley down toward the back of the plane. And it was then that it struck me—just how many people order a tomato-juice-based beverage while up in the air. Now, though you might see the odd person ordering a Bloody Mary down on the ground, it really is a pretty rare occurrence, at least in the circles in which I move. However, up above the clouds, watching the drinks flying off the trolley, it really felt like every fourth order or so involved tomato juice. But what exactly is so special about the red fruit (or is it a vegetable?) in the air, and how might the insights garnered from the drinks trolley in the sky lead to a radical redesign of airline food?

Well, firstly, you shouldn’t just take my word for it. Before going any further, we need to check on the veracity of the observation. Luckily, my intuitions proved correct: it turns out that tomato juice makes up 27% of the drinks ordered in the sky. What is more, there is a whole section of the population who regularly order a tomato juice from an air steward or stewardess but who would never think of doing so with their feet planted firmly on the ground. Of the more than 1,000 passengers questioned in one survey, 23% fell into the latter category. So what exactly is going on here? Before answering that question, though, let’s take a quick look at the history of airline food.

The way it was

Plane food hasn’t always been bad. Back in the early days of commercial flight, the airlines would put on quite a spread for anyone who was rich enough to fly. Believe it or not, they used to compete on the quality of their food offering, with a carvery, lobster, prime rib, etc. available to all who wanted it (see Figure 8.1). Perhaps this helps explain why the pop-up dining concept Flight BA2012, in Shoreditch, east London, was such a success. The hipsters of Hoxton were able to sample a three-course meal inspired by the airline’s 1948 first-class menu. It is hard to imagine that contemporary airline food would have had quite the same appeal (see Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.1. Airline food as it used to be! “How many lobsters would you like today, madam?” Passengers being served fresh Norwegian lobsters (with their shell still on). Note the aperitifs set on ice too.

Everything changed in 1952, though, with the introduction of economy class and the associated economies of scale required once passenger numbers increased dramatically. The International Airline Transport Association (IATA) didn’t help matters, either: they actually brought in guidelines limiting what food could be offered up in the skies, at least in economy class. Scandinavian Airlines were even fined $20,000 for serving their transatlantic passengers a bread roll that was deemed to be just too good, following a complaint from Pan Am, one of their competitors. In recent times, though, there can be no doubt that (in real terms) less and less money is being spent on the food offering in the air, assuming, that is, that any food is provided at all.

Figure 8.2: An impressive-looking French menu served on board a flight from Copenhagen to Singapore, stopping in Bangkok on the way, in the 1950s.

Once upon a time, the food was pretty much the only thing that kept air passengers from thoughts of their own demise, should the plane’s none-too-reliable engines fail. Hence the quality of the offering was especially important, given that the passenger had little else to occupy their minds other than admiring the view from the window. Nowadays, though, everything has changed. For one thing, plane travel is, thankfully, safer than ever. What is more, all manner of entertainment is available to passengers at the touch of a button.

Mind you, the cabin atmosphere up at 35,000 feet isn’t all that conducive to fine dining. The lowered air pressure, together with the lack of humidity (the air, don’t forget, is recycled through the cabin every 2–3 minutes), really doesn’t help, with food and drink losing roughly 30% of its taste/flavor when sampled at altitude. Aware of these problems, a number of the airlines test their menus under conditions that mimic the atmosphere up there down here, if you see what I mean. In Germany, for instance, at the Fraunhofer Institute, half an old Airbus plane has been plonked in a low-pressure chamber where they test people’s reactions to the foods that they are thinking of serving up above the clouds.

More often than not, though, the airlines have opted to load the food they serve with ever more sugar and salt, to enhance the flavor. No surprise, therefore, that the airline food served these days isn’t the healthiest. In fact, it has been estimated that the British consume more than 3,400 calories between their check-in at the airport and their arrival at their destination.

Over the years, the airlines have sought advice from chefs to help improve their food offerings. Back in the day, it was French chef Raymond Oliver who was brought in by Union de Transports Aériens (the precursor of what was to become Air France). His advice fundamentally changed what was served in the air, and soon established the standard format for the meals that so many of us have now become all too used to. In fact, the chicken or fish dishes that one finds on many of today’s economy-class menus can be traced directly back to the chef’s early suggestions. For instance, Oliver recommended serving foods that the passengers would find familiar; not quite comfort food, exactly, but at least something reassuring. He was looking for hearty meals that were easy to prepare and heavy to digest, the idea being that then the passengers wouldn’t get hungry again before the plane landed. The meals shouldn’t lose too much of their flavor when reheated either. The chef’s suggestions: coq au vin, beef bourguignon and veal in cream sauce. (It was 1973, after all!) These dishes also had the advantage that the meat, drenched as it was in sauce, wouldn’t dry out too much when heated up in the plane.

Can celebrity chefs really cut the mustard at 30,000 feet?

Today, it’s much more common for airlines to bring in a chef to try to improve their food offering. And a number of them have hired celebrity chefs in order to spruce up their airline meals, Neil Perry from Australia teaming up with Qantas, for instance, or Heston Blumenthal with British Airways, or the late, great Charlie Trotter advising United Airlines. (Trotter’s top tip was short ribs spiced with Thai-style barbecue sauce; the addition of spice and the inclusion of sauce are both good ideas when it comes to dining at altitude.) Meanwhile, Air France currently has so many great chefs to choose from that they rotate their affiliation on a regular basis.

My guess is that even those sitting in the front of the plane would have little inkling of the star chefs’ involvement in the dishes that they are tucking into were it not for their names emblazoned on the menu cards. Certainly, I have yet to see any evidence to support the claim that the chefs’ interventions in any of the cases just mentioned actually led to a significant increase in passenger satisfaction. And, perhaps more tellingly, the airlines that have sought advice from the top chefs don’t seem to appear any more frequently in the list of the top-ten airlines for food that is published annually. Regardless of how many Michelin stars a chef has, their food will never taste (quite) as good in the air as when served in their flagship restaurant down on the ground. What many of the frequent business passengers do appear to appreciate, though, is the change in format from the fixed-course meal service of old to more of a grazing approach, allowing them to eat what they want, more or less when they want—food on demand, as it were.

As we have already seen, to a large extent what we think about food and drink depends on the context or environment in which it happens to be consumed. And airline food is no different. One of the other significant impediments to progress in the sky relates to the long-term catering contracts that many of the airlines have signed up to. Thus, even if the airline, or the chef that the airline has brought in, wants to change the culinary offering, it can prove difficult to do so in practice. Behind the scenes, a number of the catering suppliers have now started to bring in some innovative chefs to help advise them directly. The more fundamental issue here, though, is that the chefs’ input is typically restricted just to the ingredients, recipes and preparation of the food. And as we are about to see, any solution that is solely focused on the food will only take you so far. It’s time to bring in the gastrophysics perspective.

What’s the link between the humble tomato and aircraft noise?

Let’s get back to the juice! Once the plane has reached cruising altitude, the passenger’s ears will be exposed to somewhere in the region of 80–85 dB of background noise, depending on how close they are to the engines. This racket suppresses our ability to taste. However, it does not affect our perception of all foods equally. The really special thing about tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce (both ingredients in a good Bloody Mary) is umami, the proteinaceous taste, experienced in its purest form as monosodium glutamate or MSG. While it has long been popular in East Asian cuisine (e.g., in Japan, where the term translates as “delicious,” “savory” or “yummy”), it has recently started to attract the interest of chefs from many other parts of the world too. In the West, those foods that you are likely to have come across that are rich in umami include Parmesan cheese, mushrooms, anchovies and, of course, tomatoes. So, could this help to explain the mystery of why so many people order a tomato-juice-based beverage while up in the air?

Well, in 2015, researchers from Cornell University finally got around to assessing the effect of loud airplane noise on people’s ability to taste umami. Participants sitting in the lab had to rate the strength of a series of clear drinks, each containing one of the five basic tastes presented at one of three different stimulus concentrations. Each of the solutions was tasted in silence and also while listening to pre-recorded airplane noise at a realistic decibel level. Intriguingly, the perceived intensity of the umami solutions was rated as significantly higher when the background noise was ramped up. By contrast, ratings of sweetness were suppressed, while ratings of the taste of the salty, sour and bitter solutions were unaffected. Given such results, British Airways’ decision to introduce an umami-inspired menu on their flights back in 2013 starts to make a lot more sense.

But why should loud noise affect some tastes but not others? Well, one intriguing theory is that our responsiveness to different tastes varies as a function of how stressed we are—this being just what many passengers may be feeling while flying, especially on a bumpy flight. In one older study, for example, sweet, but not salty, solutions were rated as significantly more pleasant under conditions where stress had been induced by the presentation of loud noise. One suggestion that has been put forward to try to explain this surprising result is that the energy that is signaled by sweetness might be just what an organism needs when it comes to dealing with the kinds of situation that give rise to stress in the first place. Presumably, a similar evolutionary story could be told about the increase in the perceived intensity of umami under conditions of loud noise. For, just like sweetness, umami is also a nutritive tastant, signaling, as it does, the likely presence of protein. But whatever the correct explanation ultimately turns out to be, the key point remains that loud noise generally suppresses sweetness and sometimes saltiness, while at the same time enhancing the taste of umami.

What happens when people are given proper food to taste, rather than just pure tastants dissolved in solution? Well, playing loud white noise—think of the static sound on an untuned radio—leads to ratings of both the sweetness and saltiness of various snack foods such as potato chips, biscuits and cheese being suppressed. Somewhat surprisingly, though, crunchiness ratings were actually higher when the background noise was turned up (as compared to silence). Perhaps, then, the airlines should be thinking about adding more crunch to the food that they serve, and adding more of the other noisy textural food attributes, such as crackly and crispy too. This is likely to have the added advantage of improving the perceived freshness and palatability of the food. Indeed, this is why having a bowl of fresh fruit available (as some airlines do for business-class passengers) is a good idea. And sprinkling the salad with sesame seeds to boost the crunch factor would be a darn sight cheaper than hiring one of the world’s top chefs.

So, counterintuitive though it may sound, donning a pair of noise-canceling headphones could actually be one of the simplest ways in which to make the food and drink taste better at altitude. But, now that we have got rid of the background noise, the next question is: what else, if anything, can you listen to, in order to make your food taste better?

Supersonic seasoning

Late in 2014, British Airways introduced “Sound Bites” for their long-haul passengers. Once they had chosen their in-flight meal, passengers could tune in to one of the channels in the seatback entertainment system. There they would find a carefully chosen playlist of popular tunes that had been specially selected to complement the taste of the food. The musical selections were based, in part, on research findings from my lab. A number of the tracks were chosen to boost the perceived authenticity/ethnicity of the dishes, given research showing that this attribute can be enhanced by presenting matching music (or, for that matter, any other sensory cues) appropriate to the region associated by people with the food (see “The Atmospheric Meal”). Think lasagne, or pasta, while listening to one of Verdi’s arias (and if you can find a red and white checked tablecloth, even better), or perhaps Scottish salmon with The Proclaimers?

Some of the first empirical evidence supporting the existence of sonic seasoning came from research conducted with The Fat Duck Research Kitchen in Bray. Together with the then head research chefs, Steffan Kosser and Jockie Petrie, we were able to demonstrate that listening to soundscapes containing lots of tinkling, high-pitched notes accentuated the sweetness of a bittersweet cinder toffee, whereas listening to low-pitched noises brought out the bitterness instead. The effects, it should be said, weren’t huge (5–10%), but they were large enough to potentially make a difference to the tasting experience while up in the air. So why don’t you forget about adding sugar the next time you are eating at altitude, and instead just tune in to some sweet, calorie-free music? That said, while we have now got some pretty effective sweet tunes, we are still struggling to create the perfect sonic salty backdrop.

Now, I am assuming that you have taken my advice and got yourself a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and that you are listening to the right sort of music to complement, and thus improve, the flavor of whatever you happen to be eating or drinking. So, what next? What else can be done to improve the meal experience while passengers are up in the air? Well, if the food really is worth savoring, one simple tip here would be to pause the movie. For according to the ground-based research covered in the “Social Dining” chapter, you ought to find that you enjoy your food a little more while, at the same time, finding yourself satisfied with less of it.

Tasting under pressure

In addition to the background noise, one of the other problems with tasting at altitude is the reduced cabin air pressure. These days, planes are pressurized to create an atmosphere that is equivalent to what one would find at an altitude of approximately 6,000–8,000 feet. Under such conditions, it becomes harder to taste sweet, sour, salty and bitter. No wonder then that airline food tastes so bad. However, the more profound problem is that the number of volatile aromatic molecules in the air also decreases as the cabin air pressure drops. It is this that can really suppress our flavor perception. One innovative solution might be to wear a Breathe Right nasal strip. These plasters were originally designed for athletes to place over their nostrils in order to increase the intake of air, potentially enhancing their sporting performance. Wearing one can lead to nasal airflow going up by as much as 25%. So thinking laterally here, one might consider providing the passengers with one along with their earplugs on boarding the plane, as a means of increasing their exposure to any of the volatile aromas of food and drink that are still floating around in the atmosphere at altitude. However, while this solution has yet to be tried in the skies, the findings from research conducted down on the ground have unfortunately so far been, how shall I put it, less than encouraging.

Another recommendation for improving the tasting experience while up in the air (i.e., at low atmospheric pressure) comes from Professor Barry Smith, a philosopher and wine writer working out of the University of London. He has noticed that high-altitude wines (e.g., New World Malbec from Argentina) tend to be rated better in the air than one might have anticipated from tasting them on the ground. Why should that be so? Well, his suggestion is that the atmospheric conditions on the side of the mountain where many of these wines are made (i.e., blended) is, in some sense, closer to those one finds in an airplane cabin than for some other wines. The grapes that go into Argentinian Nicolas Catena’s Zapata wines, for instance, are grown at around 5,700 feet. So perhaps it is no wonder his wines taste better at altitude. So next time you get the chance to choose your wine on a plane, remember another one of Smith’s suggestions and go for a fruitier number. Whatever you do, Smith argues that you’d do well to avoid those prestige wines with firm tannins, as they may well leave you with a fiercely astringent/bitter taste in your mouth.

Another problem with the atmosphere in a plane cabin is that the humidity levels are much lower than on the ground (below 20%, as compared to 30% or more in the average home). The good news again, at least for those traveling in style, is that the humidity apparently tends to be a little higher at the front of the plane. Lower humidity levels also impair our ability to taste, since they tend to result in the drying of our nose, making it harder to detect the remaining volatile odor molecules. A few years ago, chef Heston Blumenthal came up with his own idiosyncratic solution to this particular problem. His recommendation was that anyone wanting to enjoy their food and drink more while flying should give themselves a nasal douche with a water spray. The idea here (perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek) was to try and increase the humidity in the nostrils to make up for the lack of humidity in the air that is recirculated every couple of minutes or so through the cabin. With all due respect, though, while the suggestion undoubtedly makes for engaging television, it is hard to imagine anyone actually taking the advice seriously. And anyway, before getting too carried away, just remember that should the nasal douche work as hoped, it would also increase your ability to smell the passengers sitting close by. Are you sure that is really what you want?

Simple tips for service

For my brother, a self-confessed wine buff, the realization came while staying in a Swiss ski chalet a few years ago. He had decided to open a long-treasured bottle of wine, but the only thing that he could find to pour the wine into late one night was the plastic water cup from the bathroom. He knew exactly what the wine—a Kistler Chardonnay—ought to taste like. He had, after all, liked it so much that he had bought a couple of cases of the stuff. Somehow, though, with the wrong drinking vessel, my brother just wasn’t able to recreate the great tasting experience that he knew he should be having—one that, moreover, he desperately wanted to be enjoying, given how much he had paid for the wine in the first place. On a plane, served an unfamiliar vintage, it is going to be even harder for any of us to discount the glassware and focus instead solely on the quality of the contents and how much we are enjoying the experience. Haven’t we all been disappointed while drinking something expensive from a flimsy plastic container? No matter how prestigious the contents, the cheap feel of the vessel takes away from the pleasure of the experience.

What all of us know intuitively, I think, and the research data now backs up, is that we like beverages more when they are served in the appropriate receptacle than when served in something inappropriate. Just think about it, would you enjoy drinking tea out of a wine glass? Of course not! Knowing this, one really has to wonder what on earth many of the airlines are thinking: how, I ask you, can anyone honestly justify serving the complimentary glass of champagne that many business-class service encounters start with from such a light and flimsy cheap plastic glass? While serving the champagne from a plastic flute would help a little, I would suggest that anyone hoping to optimize the tasting experience should really be using glass, not plastic—for weight is crucial to the experience, no matter whether we find ourselves in the air or on the ground.

Back in the days of supersonic flight, every gram counted (much more so than it does on regular flights). At some point, designers were brought in to help develop some stylish new extra-lightweight cutlery for Concorde (plastic, while undoubtedly very light, was obviously not an option) and created some beautiful titanium cutlery: exquisite to look at, and lighter than anything metal that had gone before. Job well done! Or so one imagines they must have thought. The problem, though, was that people simply didn’t like it. When trialed, it just felt too light and consequently it was never introduced on board.

Finally, I know of one innovative airline that has recently been thinking about the material properties of the cutlery they hand out. Why would they want to do that? Well, because the material from which the fork and especially the spoon (i.e., those items that enter your mouth) are made can modify the taste of the food. We conducted some research relevant to this a few years ago, together with the Institute of Making in London. We were able to demonstrate that an everyday sample of yogurt, to which a small amount of salt had been added, was rated as tasting saltier when eaten with a stainless steel spoon that had been electroplated with copper or zinc. Such results raise the question of whether novel cutlery designs like this could be used to help season the food served in the air. Remember here that it is primarily sweet and salty tastes that are suppressed by all that loud background airplane noise. Unfortunately, though, while there are certain metals that can be used to bring out the salty, bitter and sour taste in food, I am not aware of any metal that can boost sweetness. Well, there is lead, I suppose; it is just that it is also poisonous. So, not quite what one wants in one’s cutlery.

Will multisensory experience design really take off?

All well and good, I hear you say, but will anything actually change in the near future? What will the airline meal of tomorrow look like? The good news, according to my sources, is that one of the big airlines plans to launch an in-flight food and beverage offering that will put everything that we have become accustomed to in recent years to shame. I’m afraid I can’t say any more just yet. But where one airline leads, others may, sooner or later, follow, and if this is the case, then I am hopeful that we might finally see a return to the early days of flight, when the fledgling airlines competed on the quality of their food service offering (for their admittedly deep-pocketed passengers).

Does this sound unbelievable? Well, before you dismiss it, do allow me to paint a picture of air travel as it was back at the end of the 1960s. At that time, Trans-World Airlines started running themed “foreign accent” flights between major U.S. cities. Let me quote Alvin Toffler, former editor of Fortune magazine and author of the bestseller Future Shock directly (for otherwise, I fear, you will think I am making it up): “The TWA passenger may now choose a jet on which the food, the music, the magazines, the movies, and the stewardess’s outfits are all French. He may choose a ‘Roman’ flight on which the girls wear togas. He may opt for a ‘Manhattan Penthouse’ flight”—the mind boggles—“or he may select the ‘Olde English’ flight on which the girls are called ‘serving wenches’ and the décor supposedly suggests that of an English pub.”

Toffler continues: “It is clear that TWA is no longer selling transportation, as such, but a carefully designed psychological package as well. We can expect the airlines before long to make use of lights and multi-media projections to create total, but temporary, environments providing the passenger with something approaching a theatrical experience.” And before their demise TWA weren’t the only ones. For a short period in the early 1970s you might even have come across a piano lounge with a fully-functioning Wurlitzer electric piano at the back of some American Airlines 747 planes. And the British Overseas Airways Corporation (the precursor to British Airways) apparently had it in mind to provide their unmarried male passengers with a “scientifically chosen” blind date when they touched down in London. Little surprise that the latter scheme, called “The Beautiful Singles of London,” was scrapped when the government-owned airline came under criticism from Parliament. Ultimately, then, the sky really is the limit for anyone willing to recognize the power of multisensory experience design.