Oxford professor discovers hack to make plane food taste better

Pack this one item to make your in-flight meal more delicious, says academic

The quality of plane food is a notoriously contentious subject (Getty Images)

An Oxford professor has discovered a novel way to make plane food taste better - wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

According to Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, low-pitched noises, such as the drone from a plane’s engines, can make food taste up to 10 per cent more bitter.

Writing in The Boston Globe, Professor Spence explained: “The lower cabin pressure, dry cabin air and loud engine noise all contribute to our inability to taste and smell food and drink.”

Chefs at Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant, the Fat Duck in Bray, worked with Mr Spence on a series of experiments to see how extraneous noises can change perception of taste.

They found that listening to tinkling, high-pitched notes could increase your perception of sweetness by 10 per cent.

They also discovered that low-pitched noises accentuate bitterness by up to 10 per cent.

“In one such study,” The Boston Globe reports, “volunteers ranked the bittersweet candy cinder toffee as more bitter while listening to the low pitch of brass music, and sweeter when listening to the high pitch of a tinkling piano.”

“The effects… weren’t huge, but they were large enough to potentially make a difference to the tasting experience while up in the air,” said Mr Spence.

He says this means that donning a pair or noise-cancelling headphones, or even earplugs for that matter, could help food taste better when eaten up at 35,000 feet.

This news will be music to the ears of those who remain scathing about in-flight food.

A recent British Airways passenger called his business class breakfast “disgusting” after being served a burnt-looking cheese and tomato toastie.

Meanwhile, a Ryanair passenger critiqued what she claimed was the “soggiest, saddest” ever lasagne, served to her on a recent flight.