Food for lemmings

Posted on May 15, 2009

Next time you’re on a plane and it’s meal service, take a moment to look around. Not at the flight attendants pushing their carts down the aisles monotonously asking “Chicken or fish?”; but rather at your fellow passengers.

Chances are that like me, 99.9% of the flights you’re ever likely to travel on will see you crammed into Economy Class. And it is here that people are served some of the most diabolical food we’ll come across in our lives. As each passenger receives their hobby-kit tray, trepidation distorts the expressions on their faces. Passengers gingerly pry the corners of their dish’s foil lids, peering in with hope that, by some wild streak of luck, they’ve received something remotely pleasing to the taste buds. Inevitably, shoulders droop as they realise how silly they were to have such expectations. Defeated, they unwrap their plastic utensils to prod their clump of brown meat, two carrots and a slice of potato.

By all accounts, only the most sadistic would take any pleasure from eating plane food. It looks bad, tastes of nothing, leaves you hungry and could even do weird things to your digestion (a friend of mine swears that airlines lace the food to cause constipation, thus preventing the plane’s waste storage from overfilling). And so why would you eat such ghastly slop if there were another option?

While I was doing my weekly trip to the supermarket, I noticed that many a shopper was filling their trolleys with frozen meals. Since I usually bypass that aisle altogether, I was quite surprised to see that this once niche market had grown to fill freezer after freezer. The usual frozen burgers, pizzas and lasagnes now rub shoulders with dozens of fettucines, risottos, cordon bleus. ‘Delicious!’ some boxes shouted while other labels announced that their contents were ‘97% fat free!’. These were the solutions for the dilemmas faced by today’s weight conscious, time-poor consumers.

Intrigued, I decided to give one a go. The last time I had eaten a frozen meal was when I was a child, and so I certainly baulked at the $5-7 price range. For that coin you can cook up a pretty decent home brew, or you could even eat at your local Chinese take-away. Heck, Uni students could buy enough Mie Goreng to last a week. With most of the packaging red in colour, I was naturally drawn to the more pacifying blue box (I guess proving that colours are certainly buying triggers) containing a chicken risotto. ‘Creamy’, ‘delicately flavoured’, ‘less than 3% fat’. All I had to do was nuke it for six minutes, get changed out of my work clothes and I’d have a piping hot gourmet meal ready to devour.

Since that shopping trip the baby blue box has sat in my freezer. Occassionally I’d consider eating it, but then I’d put it back and opt for something else instead. I couldn’t bring myself to do it; probably because I knew - deep down - what to expect. Last night, I bit the bullet and tossed it in the microwave. I admit that I - like an airline passenger - slowly peeled the plastic cover with pure curiosity… only to be rather dismayed by what I saw: a big blob of lumpy yellow. It looked like the dried up vomit you’d find in a corner on George St. Like that famous scene from Falling Down, my first thought was that it didn’t look anything like the photo. Perhaps there was something mistake. I stirred it, comparing it to the picture again. Nope. It looked even worse. I decided to add salt, lots of it. Some chilli powder too. I tentatively tasted it. I added cracked pepper. Tried it again. Hmm. More salt.

Give me some turbulence, wedge me between two people with their elbows in my ribcage and I’d be right back on a plane. For those that are guilty of eating this sort of stuff, then I think you’ve lost all rights and privileges to ever, ever, complain about airline food. If you’re willing to buy it from the supermarket then hey, I don’t think you should be pulling faces when airlines hand it to you gratis.

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