Well, the meals on the plane are not known as culinary delights. Nevertheless, according to German researchers from the Fraunhofer research institute, we should not be too critical. They discovered that our taste deteriorates sharply once we fly.
Low taste
High in the skies we only taste 20 to 30 percent of salty flavors † The sweet flavors are 15 to 20 percent less powerful and herbs also lose their taste. What still taste good are sour and bitter flavors. Hence those airplane meals not much fun.
Why do we taste so bad on the plane? In the dry air of the plane you smell much less † And smell determines our taste for no less than 80 percent. The researchers from Germany came to this conclusion after testing 100 subjects in an aircraft simulator . tasted different flavors. They tasted considerably less of the meal on the plane than when they ate an airplane meal on land.
The research was done in collaboration with airline caterer LSG Sky Chefs of Lufthansa. They are now busy revising their recipes and adapt to the results. Simply making everything stronger doesn't work, because some flavors are preserved and others don't. So that will be quite a task.
