Hate The Taste Of Plane Food? Research Says There’s A Very Good Reason For That

You're not alone.  There’s nothing worse than being on a long-haul flight (or any flight for that matter) and being absolutely starving. As you countdown to the service trolley arriving at your row of seats, the disappointment becomes more acute when you realize that what they’ve served you, is actually awful. You don’t want to eat it – at all. So the battle begins, the battle between your stomach and your taste buds as, let’s face it, you’re still starving, and that little bread roll thing they give you isn’t going to last you another six hours. If that sounds like something you’ve experienced when travelling, then listen up, as new research says there is a good reason why food on planes doesn’t taste good. Psychologists in the US tested a number of different influences, and found that because eating is a multi-sensory experience, exposure to loud noise can therefore affect how people rate their food. In the research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, they stated that the noise of the plane during a flight can actually impact how you feel about the food, and so studied the impact of noise on the five basic tastes – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. They tested these tastes on 48 participants, at different levels of noise and had some surprising results. “The results suggest that enjoyment of airline food may be rated consistently lower than would be expected because the loud ambient noise dampens perception of pleasurable flavours,” said co-author Kimberly Yan of Cornell University, New York. There you have it folks, it’s all about the noise.