Why we should ditch plane food
The severe case of underwhelm that is inevitable every time a plastic tray is slid onto the fold-down table in front of me on an international flight is reason enough to stick a plastic fork in my eye.
The severe case of underwhelm that is inevitable every time a plastic tray is slid onto the fold-down table in front of me on an international flight is reason enough to stick a plastic fork in my eye.
I’ve been flying around a bit lately and I can report that, unless you’re up the pointy end, the covid pandemic has predictably done nothing for the quality of an inflight meal. The old story of reducing the olive consumption in business class to save an airline millions has been projected into airport catering kitchens with impunity.
And the reality is it’s not about making simpler, healthier, more sustainable food for a better price, it’s about filling a tray with faux food to satisfy some mis-lead belief that that’s what passengers want or need or paid for or something.
On my latest flight from Denpasar to Dubai it was hard to see the food through the plastic. We were offered the stark choice of omelet or beef. The latter came in a rectangular dish - one third carrot and khaki beans, one third stringy dried beef, one third noodles. Like the tricolour flag of a waning nation.
Accompanying it in the strangely compartmentalised set of containers that airlines still insist on, sat a watery pot of yoghurt, a plastic throwaway cup of water, a set of seemingly random condiments, and a not-bread roll so laden with preservatives it could survive another decade in the air.
A small, plastic-wrapped black muffin was not identifiably chocolate and, surpassing all the above, the ‘Soyjoy’ bar had the texture and flavour of years-old Christmas cake. Who named this thing?
When confronted with these meals on a flight my internal monologue kicks in: this tastes of nothing… this tastes disgusting… why am I even eating this?... why are they even serving this?
Why are they even serving it?
If the answer to this is ‘well, passengers need food’, I beg to differ. Looking around at the leftovers on neighbouring trays it didn’t look like the crowd was ravenous. Far from it. To my left, the omelet had been picked at, the baked beans barely touched. The potatoes (or ‘pommes’ according to the loftily ambitious menu that I read later online) were still there, rolling around in what could only be egg juice.
The passenger on my right had nibbled on his not-bread roll then placed the insult to his tastebuds back amid the miasma of other non-opened plastic accoutrements on his tray.
I imagine if I panned back above the seats, movie-style, I’d see tray after tray after tray of uneaten, unwrapped ‘food’ headed straight for the big landfill in the sky.
Do we passengers expect food? Of course, we do, but why? My Dubai flight left Denpasar at midnight and arrived in Dubai eight hours later. Normally within this dead-of-night time span, most of us wouldn’t have eaten one meal, let alone the two that were served. Wouldn’t we rather pay less for our flight? Wouldn’t we rather sleep?
Similarly, on a recent flight from Denpasar to Melbourne, we departed at 10pm and arrived at 5am. Unless you’re doing midnight dashes to the fridge, it’s not a time frame to be filling your face even if the food was edible.
Don’t get me wrong. A cup of tea and a Tim-Tam on a flight is lovely. A beer and a little tub of olives to end the working week, awesome. Sparkling wine and cheese and biscuits to mark the start of a holiday? Bring it on.
But a tray full of plastic-wrapped non-food that passengers pick over in the hope of finding something they like? I just don’t think we need it anymore.