Chicken rice and beef rice are the same menu of domestic airplane meals.
Why do so many people spit out airplane meals? Is the plane meal still so bad?
This has to be analyzed from two aspects!
The first reason is when the plane is flying.
Noise leads to poor taste.
American researchers have found that in a noisy plane, the taste of dessert will become less sweet, but in a noisy environment, the umami taste of food will be stronger.
Experts hope that with the help of this knowledge, the quality of airplane meals can be upgraded to a new level, and bad food can be discarded.
Robin Dando, an assistant professor of food science at Cornell University, said: "Our research confirms that the taste will be affected in a noisy environment. Interestingly, this is different in sweetness and umami: the sweetness is weakened, but the umami is greatly improved. "
If the biological clock disorder caused by jet lag and other reasons is added, the proportion of taste decline will be even greater, which further explains why plane meals are boring.
Then there is the plane meal itself.
Quick freezing and cooling, limited raw materials
In order to ensure food safety and hygiene, cold chain processing technology is adopted for aviation meals, and the temperature is kept below 18 degrees Celsius during the whole process.
All processed hot and cold meals are quickly put into a special freezer at MINUS 20 degrees Celsius to cool down, while meals such as bread are naturally cooled on the table.
The cooled meals need to be loaded into different dining cars and transported to the flight according to the flight schedule of the day. The whole transportation process needs refrigeration, and any food left at room temperature for more than half an hour can only be discarded.
When the plane entered a smooth flight, the flight attendants began to prepare meals. In order to prevent communication signals from being affected, electric heating, that is, oven heating, is generally used on airplanes.
Food reheated in the oven will naturally taste worse.
Economic downturn, reducing costs
If passengers often travel on different airline flights, they will find an interesting problem: not all the meals on the flights are hard to swallow. Some airplane meals can be called delicious and even memorable.
The mystery behind this is: the price standard of catering is different, and the taste is naturally different.
Some more service-oriented international airlines invest more in air catering, usually choose higher-priced raw materials, and the finished air meals are naturally delicious.
Unfortunately, due to the global economic downturn in recent years, the profit margin of the aviation industry has been declining, and airlines have to find ways to increase revenue and reduce expenditure.
Higher threshold, oligopoly
At present, there are three kinds of domestic aviation catering enterprises: catering companies under airlines, catering companies under airports and catering companies that exist independently without relying on airports and airlines.
China's four major aviation groups, including Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Hainan Airlines, all have their own catering companies. In addition, major domestic airports also have their own catering enterprises.
"Anything that wants to get on the plane needs the certification of relevant departments, and it is difficult for enterprises without experience in the aviation field to obtain certification."