Will Health-Conscious Travelers Push More Airlines to Offer Nutritious Food Options?
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APEX Insight: Eating healthy has never been more on-trend with more and more travelers looking to get their veggies on-the-go. Airline catering has come a long way, but still gets a bad rap from nutritionists, leading many health-conscious travelers to resort to packing their own food. But a new study proves there are indeed diet-friendly meal options in-flight, even for economy passengers.
In a recent study on in-flight food and snacks, Dr. Charles Platkin, editor of DietDetective.com and a professor of public health at Hunter College and City University of New York (CUNY), revealed which US carriers tout the healthiest food options. Top ranked were Virgin America, Delta Air Lines and JetBlue. The report revealed, however, that overall caloric content in airline food has risen.
Just as the bring-your-own-device trend has pushed airlines to raise their in-flight entertainment game, perhaps airlines will respond to the growing trend of passengers packing their own meals. Indeed, flyers are going beyond the snack stand at the airport and junk-food aisles of the grocery store, opting to prepare ever-more elaborate meals in an attempt to create a healthier passenger experience. Airport restaurants responded to this demand, offering menu options like “onboard picnics” and boxed meals that are a step up from the average airline fare.
According to in-flight food specialists DietDetective.com, Virgin America, Delta Air Lines and JetBlue were the top three ranked US carriers for healthy food options in flight.
Airlines can learn from this: Simple ingredients, such as fresh fruit and veggies, can make flyers happy if they’re put together in the right way. On the other hand, we may see a scenario in which already-tight in-flight offerings may become even tighter if airlines perceive their in-flight meals as irrelevant to passengers’ booking choices.
Packing your own lunch or dinner to fly gives travelers the ultimate meal selection, but beverages can be trickier. Due to strict security rules, most passengers can’t bring healthy liquids through security checkpoints, but soon they may not have to. Qantas recently went local to tackle the global airline-food image problem. In partnering with a Sydney-based company called Botanica, Qantas is now serving cold-pressed juice to its domestic business-class passengers. Both the airline and the juicers hope to expand that partnership to international flights.
Health-conscious flyers will surely be hoping that the trend catches on with airlines. In the meantime, maybe lunch boxes designed for flying will come to the fore.