Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vocal Bomb, and today's episode is a classic from the vault. This one has to do with the science of flavor perception and just how much flying in an airplane or a spaceship for that matter, can muck it up. Stuff really does taste different when you fly. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vocal Bomb. Here, the next time your taste buds revolt at the first bite of an
in flight meal, try holding your tongue. Not literally, of course, but instead of grousing about airlines and the food they serve, the blame for poor tasting fair may rest squarely in your mouth and the way your senses respond to the noise, pressure, and altitude associated with air travel. It's a lesson Julia Buckley learned firsthand. A United Kingdom based travel journalist and frequent Transatlantic flyer, Buckley was selected by British Airways to
help choose a new on board tea. She told us via email, I was one of the judges for the final stage when it was down to three potential teas on a flight. We blind tasted four teas at various stages of the flight. I was convinced I was selecting the same one throughout as my favorite, but actually my choices were changing with every tasting. Later, Buckley learned that the tea she'd liked best on the ground had been the one that became unbearably acidic halfway through the flight.
She was surprised and a little mortified. She said, I hadn't realized how much taste changes in the air. The two teas that felt overpowering on the ground were the most palatable in the air within an hour of the flight, whereas the most delicate one suddenly lost its flavor and brought the acidity to the forefront. It's a phenomenon researchers at Cornell University witnessed as they gauged the reactions of
forty eight people to flavors under different conditions. They gave the participants liquids designed to mimic one of our five taste sensations sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami or savory. As participants sampled the solutions, they did so under two different scenarios, first in silence, and second while listening to the sound of an eighty five decibel jet engine. The results showed the participant's sense of salty, sour, and bitter
remained about the same whether or not conditions were noisy. However, these same inflight sounds dulled sweet tastes and enhanced umami tastes like tomato juice, which may explain why tomato juice and bloody mary cocktails are so popular at altitude. By the way, alcoholic drinks don't actually become more potent on planes, but they can feel that way because altitude restricts your
body's oxygen intake. It seems that multiple sensory properties of our environment can change how we perceive food and drink, and it isn't only air travel that can have an effect. Shanti salibert, al, Los Angeles based senior writer for Modern Hiker, spent several weeks at ten thousand feet that's about three thousand meters above sea level as she traversed the Pacific Crest Trail. She told us, as I crept higher in our higher I noticed my appetite changed drastically. I found
my palette swaying to the extremes. I craved boatloads of salt and the sugariest sweets I could find. These yearnings for salty and intensely sweet flavors fall right in line with the findings at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics. At an airline's request, the institute set out to study passengers perceptions of sweetness and saltiness and discovered that both dropped by up to thirty percent during arid simulated flight conditions.
It's something to keep in mind the next time you fly and opt for a promising tomato based entree and beverage. Today's episode is based on the article mile Blah Club, Why airline food doesn't Taste good on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Laur L. Dove. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with houstuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Plang. Four more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.