How is a flight profitable? In fact, for a flight, economy class only brings in a tiny profit, or even pays out or loses money. The real money makers, apart from piggyback cargo, are first class and business class.
First class and business class guests, most of them are not rich, so they take the airplane in addition to the hardware facilities, but also look at the soft service. The airplane meal is also one of the categories they consider. Why always say that first class and business class meals are very delicious, because the airline in order to make a profit, must catch more such guests, so the cost of these two classes of meals is much higher than the economy class, and are specially designed. So in terms of cost, it's predetermined that economy class airplane meals won't be too tasty, while first and business class meals will be just fine. Think about it, how can an airline increase the cost of airline meals for the unprofitable economy class? If you were the boss, would you do this stupid thing? But for non-wealthy business class and first class guests, it's still a good deal for airlines to increase the cost of airplane meals and introduce better meals to attract more customers.
Second, humans lose 30 percent of their sense of taste at 10,000 meters in the air. When we are enjoying the airplane meal, the plane must have finished the take-off and climb phase and entered a smooth flight, which will be at an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 meters. At this altitude, our sense of smell and taste will be seriously affected, which is one of the fundamental reasons why we think airplane food is very difficult to eat. As the air pressure and humidity inside the cabin will drop during the climb, when the flight altitude exceeds 1,000 meters, the humidity will be less than 12%, which is already drier than the desert. 80% of the human perception of taste comes from the sense of smell, in such a dry environment, our perception of smell will fail, so we will not be able to smell the food should have been the taste of food, so that we feel that the food is tasteless.
There's another reason why our sense of hearing also affects our perception of whether an airplane meal is good or bad. Psychologists have found that people enjoy their food more when dining in a quiet environment. When tasting food in a noisy environment, people find the sweet and salty taste of the food to be muted, which in turn affects the flavor. The ambient sound in an airplane cabin is typically 85 decibels, which is very noisy, and therefore also affects how people perceive the flavor of the food.