Due to numerous factors regarding planes, it is unlikely for any food on an airplane to taste good. Planes have fairly dry air as well as low air pressure, causing your nasal passages to be dry and your blood to have decreased levels of oxygen, weakening your sense of smell. Now you might be wondering, why does a weakened sense of smell matter at all, we are discussing the ability to taste after all. Well, your sense of smell accounts for about 80% of what you taste. All your taste buds actually do is determine how sweet, sour, salty, savory, or bitter a food is, the rest is primarily based on smell. However, that’s not the only part of being in a plane that impacts your ability to taste. The background noise of the plane’s engine is also hindering your ability to taste. The taste of sweet and salty foods specifically was found to be less intense in environments with loud background noise. These factors hinder your ability to taste by at least 30%, but what about the food itself? Meals have to be precooked before the flight takes off and then frozen to then be thawed out while in the air. This is due to the air pressure within the plane, which makes it quite difficult to prepare meals on the spot, especially with how many passengers there are on an airplane. All of these factors cause airplane food to end up tasting quite sub-par.