However, no matter how happy you are, you are hungry. When you eat the first bite of the plane meal, you will cry again. So, why is the plane meal not delicious? Is it possible for airplane meals to become more delicious?
The taste has changed
Generally speaking, the chef is to blame for the bad food. The chef's skill is not good, and even the best ingredients will be wasted. But on the plane, such an idea will make the chef innocent. Even if we bring our own snacks, it will be boring on the plane. This is mainly because our taste has been changed.
Taste is the combination of taste buds and smell, which means that if you want to influence taste, you must influence smell and taste buds. Flying can really easily change the most important taste receptors of these two humans.
When a person boarded the plane, the air pressure in the cabin began to affect his sense of smell. As the altitude of the plane becomes higher and the air pressure drops, the humidity level in the cabin drops sharply. At the height of 9 144 meters, the air humidity is less than 12%, which is drier than most deserts. The combination of drying and low pressure will reduce the sensitivity of taste buds to sweet and salty foods by about 30%. It's not just taste buds, people think that 80% of taste is actually smell. The nose we use to smell will volatilize in a dry cabin environment, and the odor receptors will not work normally, which will make the taste of food fade by 60%. Therefore, compared with ground food, air meals will use more spices and salt.
The cabin environment is the main factor, and some food problems themselves will also reduce the taste. Above the clouds, it is not easy to prepare and provide delicious food for hundreds of people. Due to food safety standards, all meals must be prepared on the ground in advance. Food needs packaging, blast freezing and cold storage, and these complicated processes will definitely make the taste of food greatly worse.
For the sake of safety, microwave ovens and open flames are not allowed to heat food on the plane. Almost all airlines use convection ovens to heat food by blowing hot and dry air. It is difficult to cook delicious food by this heating method of draining water from food.
For those big airlines, the ticket itself is very cheap, and the daily passenger flow is thousands. At this time, the cooked food is more like a cauldron in the canteen, of course, it is difficult to give consideration to the taste.
So, it seems impossible to make the plane meal delicious? Actually, it's not. Although people's taste change is irreversible, in order to improve the quality of aviation food, many companies have come up with many ways to actively improve the taste of food.
Provide delicious food
The dry environment will attack our sense of taste in a large area, but we still have some senses that will not be affected. For example, at high altitude, spices such as cardamom, lemon grass and curry will have stronger flavors than salt and sugar. Compared with the affected sweet taste and salty taste, the sour taste, bitter taste and spicy taste are almost unaffected, especially the so-called fifth taste-umami taste, which may be stronger in noisy background noise. Data from foreign flights show that people eat tomato juice more frequently on the plane than on the ground because tomatoes and other foods are rich in umami flavor.
Umami exists in many foods, such as sardines, lavers, mushrooms and tomatoes. Therefore, many airlines will provide menus rich in umami foods. For example, United Airlines uses foods rich in umami ingredients, such as spinach, tomatoes and shellfish. On the other hand, air india used enough hot sauce to stimulate passengers' blocked sinuses.
Noise-reducing headphones and better tableware
In the sense, there is a phenomenon called synaesthesia. Synaesthesia refers to stimulating one feeling to stimulate another feeling, such as stimulating taste with hearing or stimulating taste with vision. British Airways uses noise-reducing headphones to play music that matches the taste of food in response to the noisy roar of aircraft engines in aviation classes. It designed many scenes, such as Scottish music with Scottish-style food, and other music to improve the sweetness of food.
Other airlines are thinking about how to change tableware. In order to prevent some criminals from attacking or even hijacking aircraft meals with metal or glass tableware, or to reduce costs, many airlines use plastic tableware. But when steel tableware is replaced by cheap plastic knives and forks, it will make the taste of food worse. Besides, cheap plastic cups can't taste red wine and champagne. Korean Air lowered its security concerns and provided a set of exquisite porcelain tableware for first-class passengers.
Simulate the engine room environment and develop new dishes
Some bigger and more powerful airlines are also developing new dishes in the simulated cabin. As early as 1998, Singapore Airlines set up an international cooking advisory group. In order to better adapt to the taste buds at high altitude and low pressure, Singapore Airlines also cooperated with Singapore Airport Service Company to develop airplane meals. They have a simulation cabin in the flight catering center, which can simulate the flight environment at an altitude of 65438+100000 meters. By cooking and tasting meals in a low-pressure environment, they can find a plane meal that is more suitable for high-altitude environments. With this facility, Singapore Airlines has developed many innovative in-flight meals and won many international awards.
Similarly, in order to improve the quality of food, Lufthansa Chutian, an aviation food supplier with a global market share of nearly 30%, hired a team of executive chefs to carefully cook with the most advanced local kitchens. Most food is put in special trolleys and kept frozen until it is reheated in flight. These foods will take into account the heating process, so they will not be overcooked in advance. Of course, these elaborate airplane meals are not for ordinary economy class passengers, but only for first class and business class.
Improve the plane
The last and perhaps the most direct measure is to change planes. Boeing introduced a new generation of 787 Dreamliner, improved the cabin sealing system, introduced the latest upgraded equipment such as gas filtration system and air compressor, and improved the air cleanliness and humidity in the cabin. Compared with ordinary commercial aircraft, the humidity in the cabin has increased by three times. The fairing of 787 engine adopts sawtooth shape, which helps to reduce the noise caused by airflow movement and prevent passengers from reducing their sensitivity to taste because of noise interference. In other words, on a new plane like 787, the food will taste better than on an ordinary flight.
This article comes from the magazine article No.9, 20 16, New Theory of Big Science and Technology. Readers are welcome to pay attention to the micro signal of our big technology: hdkj 1997.