I wonder if you have this feeling: Sometimes when you are on a plane, you have bad luck. The crying of children in the cabin, the conversations of passengers, and the background noise that you can never get rid of all interweave. Not only do you have a splitting headache and can’t sleep, but you also have to endure the unbearable airplane food!
However, the poor taste of in-flight meals may not be entirely due to the food itself: A survey by German aviation giant Lufthansa found that in the perception of taste by airplane passengers, the perception of sweet and salty flavors decreases, while the perception of sour and bitter flavors remains unchanged. The research suggests that this is more caused by changes in air pressure. According to a new study, cabin noise might also be a cause of unpalatable food: noise alters our taste perception, specifically weakening our perception of sweetness and enhancing our perception of umami .
Taste is not just a matter of the tongue
Here’s a brief introduction to taste first. Taste refers to the ability to perceive the flavors of substances. There are five basic components of taste – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. The first four are the basic tastes that were determined very early. The order of human sensitivity to these four tastes from high to low is bitter, sour, salty and sweet. This order of taste sensitivity can prevent humans from being poisoned because in the process of human evolution, bitter and sour things were generally inedibility. The fifth basic taste, umami, was not recognized until 1985. “umami” is a Japanese word. Many foods, such as fish, shellfish, salted meat, and vegetables (like mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, and spinach), contain umami flavor.
All kinds of seafood, such as fish, shrimp, shellfish, etc., have a strong and fresh flavor
Taste is influenced by many other senses, such as smell, which has a significant impact on taste. When one has a cold and always feels that food has no taste, it is because the sense of smell has weakened. In addition, there are visual and auditory aspects. For instance, research has found that the color of the plate can affect our sense of taste. Compared with black plates, people tend to think that desserts on white plates taste sweeter. Moreover, the closer the plate is to a circle, the stronger the sweetness people perceive. There are also studies that have found that sound can affect the crispness of food. Compared with eating potato chips with your mouth closed, you will find them crisper when you eat them with your mouth open. This is because the “click-click-click” sound when biting into potato chips with the mouth closed has weakened, so people judge that the crispy potato chips are not as crispy as before. In another study, when people were drinking beverages while listening to music with headphones on, their perception of sweetness changed significantly compared to when they were quiet.
Noise makes you “enjoy” freshness and “dislike” sweetness
This time, researchers Kimberly S. Yan and Robin Dando from the Department of Food Science at Cornell University wanted to study the impact of noise on five basic tastes. They randomly assigned the subjects to the noise group and the control group (in a quiet environment). In the noise group, the participants were required to continuously listen to the cabin noise (80-85 decibels) collected from real aircraft during flight. The subjects in the control group were placed in a normal and quiet environment. The researchers provided them with five flavors of solutions (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami), and the concentrations of each solution were divided into high, medium and low levels. The subjects need to judge the concentrations of these 15 solutions.
It was found that noise did not affect the subjects’ judgment of the three tastes of salty, bitter and sour. However, in terms of sweetness judgment, the noise group significantly underestimated the concentration of sweetness, indicating that their perception of sweetness weakened. In terms of umami judgment, the noise group overestimated the concentration of umami, indicating that their perception of umami was enhanced.
Perhaps the next time you take a flight, you can choose less sweet food and more umami food. Bringing a can of tomato juice might make your meals more delicious.