Not a huge fan of plane food? Well, after reading this you’ll be wary of ever touching the stuff again!
A Quora forum has unveiled some of the darker secrets about plane food that, well, maybe you don’t want to know about if you’re flying anytime soon.
Quora user, Shreyas P, who claims to have been working as a flight attendant for five of the world’s major airlines, had a few things to say about inflight meals.
“Airline meals are very unhealthy – even if you have ordered that raw meal, vegan meal, bland meal,” Shreyas P said.
“The food on your tray is prepared not in the galley but in the aircraft catering, which is often done 12 hours before and even days before the aircraft departure.”
Another user, Andre Menzanius, a self-confessed aviation geek, also added this gross thought regarding food trays.
He said, “Food trays are hardly ever cleaned. Make sure to think twice before touching them – people traveling with babies often have dirty diapers laying around.”
Ordered the omelet for breakfast on a recent flight? Well, according to Shreyas P, “The scrambled egg or the omelet that you just had was not only egg but can be a mix of egg and other substitute.”
But they never seem to taste that bad, do they? Well, that’s another little secret.
“Most of us aren’t aware of this, but when we are at cruise, the air pressure in an airliner is equal to about 8,000 feet above sea level (6,000-ft in a Dreamliner),” Shreyas P said.
“In addition to making your ears pop, it causes our taste buds and sense of smell to go partially numb, compared to on ground. This has major impact on how food tastes & smells. This makes it super bland.
“So airline catering in recent years has really pumped up the spices, salts, and fats — all to make your mouth happy. This is one of the reason why crew prefer to get their own food rather then eating aircraft food.”
And then there’s this horrifying confession from former United Airlines flight attendant, and current Executive Director of Inflight for Hawaii Exp, Cheryl Schwartz.
She said, “If the food flies out of the carts down in the lower lobe galley of jumbo jets and the steaks, peas, and biscuits end up rolling around on the floor and under other carts and machinery we won’t tell you we crawled on our hands and knees trying to scoop up all the food we could then either rinsed it off or brushed it off and put it back on the meal trays.
“Because after all, that’s all the food there is on the plane and everyone expects a meal, so we make it work.”
