Why does my food taste so bland on a flight?

Close your eyes...Imagine that you have just entered a plane… Having completed all the check-in processes that it comes with, you have settled in, are slightly tired, quite hungry, and waiting for the steaming hot box of what smells familiar to be placed on the seat tray in front of you... You peel it open, take a whiff, pick the fork and knife, and dig in! But...Is it... bland?!

For those frequent fliers, (or even someone who might have been only once on an airplane), the food is hardly appetising. But don’t blame the chef just yet! There is someone else to blame for it: Science.

Almost 80% of what we think is taste, actually is smell!

Your inflight experience is largely affected by what is called the ‘cabin air’. To maintain the pressure in the cabin, the composition of the air inside planes is changed, and closely monitored. This dry, cold air is what makes you feel the same way you might when you have a cold. Interestingly, this happens because it turns out that almost 80% of what we think is taste, actually is smell. No wonder, our mums used to tell us “pinch your nose and drink your milk” if we made a fuss about it as kids. Going back to the mischief monger here - Science says that the evaporating mucus inside the nose is what helps us perceive smell normally, but due to the cabin pressure, the mucus remains dry, and is unable to perceive any of it.

Adding to it, cabin air is drier than most deserts and therefore numbs your sense of taste by approximately a third. Which means that your paneer paratha would need 30% more salt than what you’d use back home, for it to taste “normal” again!

Cabin air numbs your sense of taste approximately by 33%

Flights also have high levels of noise coming from the air striking the hull and due to the engine and the winds. The collective noise is almost as loud as 85 decibels. Sounds insane, but researchers have found that loud noises largely affect the way we perceive flavours - food tastes more bland.

But not everything is as bad as it sounds. While our basic sweet and salty tastes are affected by all this balancing of noise and pressure, the sour, bitter, and spicy ones remain intact, and the savoury taste of umami that you get from tomatoes, spinach, parmesan cheese, and more, is actually heightened! A tomato juice, some kinds of cheese, mushrooms, and more, might just actually taste better than what you get on the ground.

Knowing this, the next time you are getting ready for that meal to arrive, you could tweak it a little bit here and there and actually enjoy it in a whole new light!

- Team Mighty Millets