Today we present a recent study on food, conducted by scientists over several days of Yom Tov. Scientists love doing studies on food, because it means they can eat on the job, and also take off food as a business expense.

Apparently, there was a scientific study as to why airline food doesn’t taste good. Yes, scientists decided to declare an official study, instead of just assuming that airline food doesn’t taste good because it’s not good.

“Yeah, but why isn’t it good?”

Airline food is never good. No one says, “I’m hungry; let’s go to the airport.”

These airlines are in the business because they’re good at flying, not because they’re good at cooking. You can’t complain. That’s like going out to eat and complaining that the restaurant doesn’t fly while you’re eating. You walk out of the restaurant and go, “Wait, we’re still in Brooklyn?” That’s disappointing.

There are several reason that the food isn’t good, that scientists already knew:

-According to a study at the Rocky Mountain Taste and Smell Center, going up in a tiny cabin with hundreds of people dampens your sense of smell, baruch Hashem. So it’s harder to enjoy your food.

-Also, maybe to enjoy food, you need elbow room. It’s hard to cut an entrée when your elbows are touching each other.

-Also, it doesn’t help that you’re in a bad mood on planes in the first place, after delays and people rooting through your unmentionables, and then they’re like, “How’s the tiny meal?” And you say, “FINE!” So you’re not really enjoying it.

-Also, back when I mentioned cutting entrees with your elbows touching each other, you pretended to cut things with your elbows touching each other.

But it turns out that according to the recent study, funded by—surprise!—the airlines, the reason airline food is bad is that, as we rise up into the sky, our taste buds start going numb, and everything starts tasting blander.

That’s why they give you salty pretzels. And no, I don’t know why they only give you six.

But yeah, that’s classy. Let’s blame the taste buds. If you come to my house and say, “This food doesn’t taste good,” I’ll say, “No, it’s your taste buds.”

Yeah, it’s your taste buds. It’s not because everything looks like mush and is slopped over into each other’s compartments, if there are any compartments at all, and foods were stored together that weren’t meant to be sealed in a little coffin together.

And supposedly, according to this, if you ever eat an airline meal down on the ground, it will be delicious. It’ll be three bites of complete enjoyment. But despite this, for some reason, if you’re stuck on the runway, they don’t feed you. Not until you’re up in the air. And you know why? Because the truth is that if you eat it at sea level, it’s actually too salty. They’re already oversalted, on purpose. So they are bad, just not in the way you think they are when you eat them.

Actually, it’s not unheard of that certain things taste better depending on where you are. For example, chicken soup tastes better in the sukkah. Potato kugel tastes better at a kiddush. That’s why, try as they might, these things will never become non-Jewish foods.

So now that we know what the issue is, they’re going to start improving the food, right?

Probably not. Any food they develop is going to be made down on the ground. They’re not developing it up in the air. It’s really not worth the expense of setting up a lab on a plane or sending people back and forth across the country to keep testing the meals so that customers will like it and keep asking for more, which will make the customers heavier, the plane heavier, and will cost them more in meals and R and D, even though they’re complimentary with the flight and people choose flights based almost solely on price. (Factor #2 is destination. [SOURCE: educated guess.])

So let’s blame your taste buds. But the question they’re hoping you won’t ask is that if that’s why airline food is bad, then why don’t people complain about the food they brought with them?

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, The Jewish Press, and Aish.com, among others. He also has four books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].

By Mordechai Schmutter