FASTEN your seat belts: You’re in for a fattening flight.
And while no one expects much from airline food, it’s astonishing just how much we do get – in terms of calories, fat and salt.
So contends the online diet and fitness network eFit.
Armed with menus from 15 airlines, ‘Net nutritionists clocked the average in-flight coach dinner at about 1,054 calories 24 more than a Big Mac, french fries and strawberry sundae – and 52 grams of fat, or 8 grams more than that Mac-meal.
Their conclusion? Once you’re 30,000 feet in the air, you face big dietary challenges. “We didn’t set out to crucify the airlines, but to provide information for consumers,” says eFit President and CEO Charles Platkin. “With 640 million people flying every year, many of them business travelers who fly frequently, we wondered how many understand they’re eating something extremely high in calories, fat and sodium.”
The survey was launched following a flight to San Francisco, when Platkin stared at the meal on his lap and wondered just how many calories and fat grams it contained.
“I turned to my fiancée and said, ‘You know what? I bet no one here really knows what they’re eating.’ The second I got off the plane, I called my senior producer and said, ‘Let’s analyze this.'”
Easier said than done. When his company asked 15 airlines for their coach and first-class dinner menus, recipes and nutritional breakdowns, the responses were slow in coming.
“Only about three airlines sent nutritional breakdowns,” sighs nutritionist Carey Clifford, one of three who worked on the study.
Instead, they figured out their own breakdowns, working from the airlines’ in-flight menus, recommended food-portion sizes and standard nutritional measures of fat, sodium, sugars and calories.
(Only one airline, US Airways, challenged their findings, Platkin says, but has yet to supply its own nutritional breakdown.)
So how do the airlines stack up?
Topping the coach charts, calorie and fat-wise, is Midwest Express. Its sample dinner – four baby-back ribs with barbecue sauce, a slew of side dishes (green beans, rice, tomato and spinach pasta, cornbread loaf) and lemon pie – weighed in at a whopping 1,643 calories and 91 grams of fat.
You’ll fly a lot lighter on British Airlines, where the fruit yogurt, lamb medallions in mint jus with new potatoes and fresh fruit dinner totaled a relatively Spartan 534 calories and 21 grams of fat.
But the menus that impressed the nutritionists the most were those designed by cookbook author Sheila Lukins, of Silver Palate fame, for United Airlines. A salad with reduced-calorie dressing and a side of succotash helped keep a glazed-brisket meal to 578 calories and 17 grams of fat.
Surprisingly, first-class meals were sometimes even worse on the waistline than their coach counterparts. Fly Delta first class and you may feast on filet mignon, Caesar salad, roasted potatoes and an ice-cream sundae dripping with whipped cream and nuts. That totes up to 1,829 calories – or more than some folks’ allotment for the entire day.
There’s a reason for all that excess baggage. Passengers want comfort food when they fly, contends American Airlines’ executive chef David Colella, who designed a roasted chicken dinner with macaroni and cheese, green beans and brownie totaling 824 calories and 50 grams of fat.
He says that when American experimented with a change of dessert – switching from the brownie to a fresh apple – customers not only left their apples behind, they demanded their brownie back.
With the airlines given little motivation to change their comfort-food ways, what’s a health-conscious traveler to do?
Platkin sums it up in two words: “special meals.”
Nearly every airline in the survey also provides low-calorie, low-fat, low-sodium fare, as well as several kinds of vegetarian, kosher and other restricted-diet options. But many flyers don’t know that – or, if they do, they fail to plain ahead and order one. Airlines prefer that most requests be made at least 24 hours before your flight.
“I suspect it’s not cost-effective for the airlines to promote them,” Platkin speculates. “But there are choices.”