一分鐘知天下事:飛機上的味覺

小編覺得在飛機上吃什麼都不好吃，如果覺得飛機餐吃起來都平淡無味，或是不怎美味，那這不一定是航空公司的錯。基本上，你的味覺會留在登機門，等飛機升到數千呎的高空時，不管你是吃義大利麵還是喝一口酒，味道都會變得不一樣，原因為何，我們現在來好好探究一下。

If you think the food airline companies serve up is bland or unappetising, it’s not necessarily their fault. Essentially, you leave your normal sense of taste behind at the airport departure gate. Get on board a plane and cruise to a level of thousands of feet, and the flavor of everything from a pasta dish to a mouthful of wine becomes manipulated in a whole host of ways that we are only beginning to understand.

美國航空機上餐食與商品負責人布朗表示，飛機在三萬呎的高空時，人會首先失去味蕾和嗅覺。食物的味道需要靠這兩樣來辨別，身處於加壓艙裡的人，對於鹹甜的感知能力會因此降低。

Taste buds and sense of smell are the first things to go at 30,000 feet, says Russ Brown, director of In-flight Dining & Retail at American Airlines. “Flavor is a combination of both, and our perception of saltiness and sweetness drop when inside a pressurised cabin.”

結果，機內環境跟食物好不好吃息息相關。牛津大學實驗心理學系的教授查爾斯表示: 原因有以下幾個: 濕度不夠、氣壓很低、機上噪音。

Everything that makes up the in-flight experience, it turns out, affects how your food tastes. “Food and drink really do taste different in the air compared to on the ground,” says Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University. “There are several reasons for this: lack of humidity, lower air pressure, and the background noise.”

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