Plane Food--Need I Say More?

I won't go into some diatribe about plane food. It's up there with such things as Cheeze Whiz and Big Gulps on our national registry of cultural embarassments. Still, I never cease to be amazed at the new "options" that are offered to us lowlifes flying economy.

I flew to the East Coast yesterday. Fortunately, I've got my routine down--I book tickets on Orbitz, where I've specified in my travel profile that I prefer "special meals." Such a simple thing, and the few of us who do this before flying are so much happier.

I received my breakfast before everyone else--fresh fruit with raisins and walnuts, bagel on the side. The woman sitting next to me salivated watcing me eat, while picking apart her half-heated, shriveled french toast fingers. At snack time I received grapes and a vegan cookie (no partially hydrogenated oils); she received a foiled pat of "process cheese spread" called Wee Brie (with no accompanying plastic knife), two small crackers, a brownie, and, the "healthy" option--orange-flavored "Craisins," or dried cranberries.

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to have my dried cranberries CRANBERRY flavored. Oh to have been a fly on the wall for that product development meeting. We've created so many newfangled variations on popular foods that now we even have a new fruitier flavor for fruit.

I suspect that plane passengers make the ultimate, captive test audience. Once I was on a flight where everyone received dissolvable breath mint strips in lieu of a snack. Real food has become optional.

I understand that there are some hard costs to serving fresh produce, but in a country that is increasingly producing organically grown, low-carb, low-fat, vitamin-enhanced, preservative-free, individually-wrapped foods, we still have cross-country flights full of healthy people who have to temporarily suspend their dietary habits on planes.

Time was when people ordered special meals for religious or medical reasons. Now special isn't so special--it's the norm. People understand that they won't likely get haute cuisine on a flight, but, I'm told, prison food has more nutritional value.

Comments

[ur ma]

yeh yeh wot u sayin

As you know, it's so important for anyone who's trying to lose weight to have support in their efforts. If they have an unsupportive family or spouse, it's so much harder to stick to your plan.

[Lilia Dyal]

Looking at it from the other side of the coin, it must not be very easy to come up with food for planes. Not all kinds of food can keep good for a very long time, especially in an enclosed, pressurized metal container like airplanes, so the preparation is different. Plane food needs to be able to be served quickly and conveniently, especially on long flights, so the preparation for them has pretty much become the same as for TV dinners. Although I must agree that nutrition (and taste?) should be given some more thought.