Your Airplane Food Might Taste Better If You Wear These While In The Sky

Just hearing the word "airplane food" can make quite a few travelers' tummies grumble ... for all the wrong reasons. No matter if it's the free salted snack mix on United or a First Class pan-fried beef tenderloin on a long-haul Emirates flight, everything always tastes a bit off up in the air. It's not because airline food is inherently bad. Rather, our perception of flavors actually changes in an airplane. And strangely, the fix for your "airline appetite" isn't extra seasoning, it's actually a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

It turns out that we don't just use our tongue to taste and nose to smell the food, our ears are part of the process, too. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that when diners are subjected to noises above 85 decibels while they're eating (like in an airplane cabin), their umami perception is amplified, while their ability to taste sweetness and saltiness is tamped down. Now you know why airline tomato juice, canned Bloody Marys, and dishes with lots of umami taste weirdly better than on the ground!

To get your taste bud balance back, it's as simple as getting rid of the noise. Earplugs work, but noise-cancelling headphones are best. Not only do they come with special tech to cancel out the noises (instead of just muffling them), you can also play your favorite tunes while you eat. Speaking of, did you know that certain songs can completely change how your food tastes too?

Sounds strange, but the science behind this is solid enough that British Airways once released a playlist called "Sound Bites" that it said has been DJ-ed to make your in-flight meals tastier. The groundwork for this was laid in 2010, when Professor Charles Spence of Oxford University found in a study that people have an interesting tendency to associate certain sounds with specific flavors (for example, lots of people judge brass instruments as bitter). He called this phenomenon "sonic seasoning."

So, while listening to high-pitched sounds like that of a piano, your taste buds would be more sensitive to sweetness and bitterness, which is why British Airways recommended Lily Allen's Somewhere Only We Know if you pick lemon-topped fish and chips from the menu. Low vocals apparently go well with bitterness, so if you'd like to experience the full kick of your airline coffee, an opera tenor track like Plácido Domingo's Nessun Dorma is perfect for the job. And who could've guessed the secret to a better-tasting Full English Breakfast is Johnny Marr's New Town Velocity?

Now, does the playlist actually work, or is it pseudoscience? We don't exactly have a consensus on that, but you can be the judge by downloading the playlist and giving it a go on your next long-haul. Even if it doesn't actually make your food taste better, at least you'll have some good music to go with your meal!