{"id":1568,"date":"2019-03-11T18:40:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T01:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/?p=1568"},"modified":"2019-03-11T18:40:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T01:40:32","slug":"a-taste-in-high-altitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/2019\/03\/11\/a-taste-in-high-altitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Taste in High Altitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Adam Ruins Everything - What&#039;s the Deal with Airplane Food? (Everyday Ruins) | truTV\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/s2KTAdWk5qk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Have you ever heard of anyone say \u201cthis airplane food tastes so good\u201d? \u00a0Chances are, you probably haven\u2019t and you are not alone. According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.2466\/pms.1972.34.2.667\">study<\/a> by Lorenz, your \u201cbasic taste sensitivity decreases with increasing altitude\u201d. So it\u2019s not necessarily the airline\u2019s fault that they have bad food but it might be because your taste buds and the sense of smell become less sensitive when you are flying 30,000 ft in the air.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>How does this happen?<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1569\" style=\"width: 220px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1569\" class=\"wp-image-1569 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/files\/2019\/03\/820px-Kieli_kaikki_en.svg_-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/files\/2019\/03\/820px-Kieli_kaikki_en.svg_-210x300.png 210w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/files\/2019\/03\/820px-Kieli_kaikki_en.svg_-768x1096.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/files\/2019\/03\/820px-Kieli_kaikki_en.svg_-718x1024.png 718w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/files\/2019\/03\/820px-Kieli_kaikki_en.svg_-561x800.png 561w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/files\/2019\/03\/820px-Kieli_kaikki_en.svg_.png 820w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1569\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo 1. The anatomy of a tongue with different taste receptors. <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Kieli_kaikki_en.svg\">Source<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>We can taste six different flavours, such as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savoury) using taste buds located in our mouth. There are a few factors that influence how the taste buds perceive the taste of food:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Humidity<\/li>\n<li>Air pressure<\/li>\n<li>Sense of smell<\/li>\n<li>Sound<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once you are on an airplane, all these factors change which affects your ability to taste food.<\/p>\n<p>The airplane cabin drops humidity level to about 12 %, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.askthepilot.com\/questionanswers\/cabin-air-quality\/\">drier than most deserts<\/a>. Even inside the pressurized cabin, it is equivalent to standing on top of a 2500 m mountain and the fluctuations of height decrease the pressure inside the cabin, compared to when you are standing on the ground. A combination of low humidity and low pressure leads to <a href=\"https:\/\/oralcancerfoundation.org\/complications\/xerostomia\/\">xerostomia<\/a> where your mouth is dry from reduced saliva flow. This lowers your taste buds\u2019 sensitivity by about 30 % and consequently, your food taste plain. Your nose plays an important role in tasting food as the smell can be a huge component of flavour. Low humidity levels dry your nose leading to a decrease in your ability to sniff odours. In addition, the constant sound of the engines, often over 85 dB, can impact a nerve called the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/topics\/veterinary-science-and-veterinary-medicine\/chorda-tympani\">chonda tympani<\/a> that runs from your taste buds to the middle of your ear. As a result, the sensitivity of your taste buds decreases as a response to the nerve\u2019s responsiveness to sound.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Airplane food tips and tricks<br \/>\n<\/strong>It turns out that the change of the environment does not affect all flavours. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/article-3081285\/Why-airplane-food-tastes-BAD-Loud-noise-flying-affects-way-perceive-flavour-study-claims.html\">Interestingly, this was specific to sweet and umami tastes, with sweet taste inhibited and umami taste significantly enhanced<\/a>\u201d said Robin Dando, assistant professor of food science at Cornell University. With this in mind, here are some tips and tricks to elevate airplane food to new heights.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left\">Try having an umami-rich menu like tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left\">Use noise-cancelling headphones to block noises<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left\">Eat or drink early in the flight before the humidity drops even more<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Food for thought<br \/>\n<\/strong>Technology has advanced in the field of food sciences to modify pre-existing food to add more value, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grapplefruits.com\/index.html\">Gr\u0101pple<\/a>, an apple that tastes like grapes. It is worth investigating how airplane food can be enhanced to \u201ctaste better\u201d when we lose our sense of taste.<\/p>\n<p>Written by: Suyoung Ahn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Have you ever heard of anyone say \u201cthis airplane food tastes so good\u201d? \u00a0Chances are, you probably haven\u2019t and you are not alone. According to a study by Lorenz, your \u201cbasic taste sensitivity decreases with increasing altitude\u201d. So &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/2019\/03\/11\/a-taste-in-high-altitudes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132763],"tags":[205143,4105938,3000,956986,979549],"class_list":["post-1568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-engagement","tag-airplane","tag-altitude","tag-food-science","tag-taste","tag-tongue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1570,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions\/1570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}