Eating and Drinking Well at 35,000 Feet

Airline food has a bad reputation it only partly deserves. A significant part of the problem is not the kitchen. It is your nose.

Why everything tastes flat

At cruising altitude, low pressure and very dry air reduce your perception of sweet and salty flavours by roughly a third. Aroma, which carries most of what we think of as taste, is blunted further by the dryness in your nasal passages.

This is why airline catering leans heavily on salt, acidity and umami, and why tomato juice - unusually - tastes better in the air than on the ground. Umami-rich flavours hold up when sweet and salt drop away.

Spicy food, strong cheese, curries and anything acidic tend to survive the trip best. Delicate dishes rarely do.

Hydration, in real numbers

Cabin humidity is very low, and you lose fluid steadily through breathing alone. A reasonable working target is a glass of water roughly every hour of the flight, more if you are drinking coffee or alcohol.

Practical approach:

• Bring an empty bottle and fill it after security
• Ask the crew for a full bottle rather than the small cup, which most will provide
• Get up to the galley for water between services rather than waiting
• Treat alcohol and coffee as extras that each need a glass of water alongside

Dehydration is behind a lot of what people call jet lag: the headache, the dry throat, the fogginess in the first hours after landing.

Special meals

Most full-service airlines let you request a special meal, usually up to 24 to 48 hours before departure, at no charge. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, halal, low-salt, diabetic and child meals are widely available.

Two side effects worth knowing. Special meals are often served first, before the main service, which is convenient. And they are prepared to a fixed spec, so they are sometimes plainer than the standard tray.

If you have a serious allergy, tell the airline at booking and again at the gate. Airlines vary widely in what they can accommodate, and none of them can guarantee an allergen-free cabin.

Bringing your own

Solid food through security is generally fine. Sandwiches, nuts, fruit, chocolate, protein bars - all pass, though fresh fruit and meat may be confiscated on arrival by agriculture controls at the destination.

Good travel food is dry, sturdy and not strongly scented. Your neighbours will remember a tuna salad for the entire flight.

Avoid anything that counts as a liquid or paste over 100ml, which includes yoghurt, hummus and soft cheese.

Timing your meals

On a night flight, eat at the airport and skip the first service. The two hours of clatter and lights after takeoff is time you could spend asleep, and the meal is rarely worth the trade.

On a day flight arriving in the evening, eat normally and use the meal service to align yourself with the destination's mealtimes.

A simple rule that works: eat when your destination is eating, from the moment you board.

Small comforts

Ginger, in tea or sweets, settles a queasy stomach. Peppermint helps with bloating, which the pressure change makes more likely. Fizzy drinks make it worse.

And keep something in your bag for after landing. Arrivals halls at three in the morning are not known for their catering, and low blood sugar makes every transfer decision worse. Our guide on the first day after landing covers the rest of that stretch.