17 Aug 2017:Do you ever find yourself almost compulsively ordering a tomato juice in flight when you seldom if ever drink it on the ground? If you do, rest assured you are not alone.
Last week on an early morning AC flight from New York to YYZ, I broke two of my personal flight etiquette taboos. One, I opened a conversation with the stranger sitting next to me, and two, I led in with a direct question.
The unsuspecting business ‘person’ (not sure if it’s PC to say ‘woman’?) in the next seat had caught my attention by ordering a tomato juice. Not only that but she’d done so just seconds ahead of my thinking that I would ask for the very same thing.
So what, you may ask? Well, what’s weird is that I would never dream of drinking a straight-up TJ on terra firma – other that is than in a Bloody Mary, something again I only drink as part of the occasional Sunday brunch ritual.
So, when I asked her quite bluntly if she ever drank tomato juice other than on a flight, she politely answered, “Funny you should ask but, come to think of it, the answer would have to be no.” I think she felt reassured when I told her that I regularly suffered from the same irrational craving and that was what had spurred my question.
It’s true – for years now I’ve been fascinated by the vast levels of tomato juice that seem to be consumed in the air. I’d just never thought to investigate it before: And the resulting findings are quite amazing.
Let’s start with a simple pop quiz. Which of the following three beverages, did Lufthansa distribute in the greatest quantity (by liters) last year?
- a) wine
b) beer
c) tomato juice
If you picked B you were correct which, with Germans, is hardly surprising. Amazingly however, ‘tomatensaft’ (aka tomato juice) came a remarkably close second. While Lufthansa passengers consumed 2.1 million liters of beer, they also put away 1.8 million liters of TJ, which for the visually inclined, is about an Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth. A thought that somehow brings to mind one of those scary scenes from ‘The Shining’ – “REDRUM!”
Some further investigation revealed that (thankfully) I was not the only one to have noticed this phenomenon. The Munich-based Fraunhofer Institute had actually gone so far as to devise an elaborate test to see if and how people’s perceptions of tomato juice change when flying. In a mockup A310 cabin, low pressure, inflight noise and other distractions were recreate and, in terms of tomato juice research at least, their findings were remarkable.
It revealed that at ground level the stuff got a low rating – was even described as “musty” or “moldy” by many – but all that changed at altitude where it suddenly became the drink of choice, tasting more acidic and refreshing.
Tomato it seems is rich in something called ‘umani’ which is also known as ‘the fifth taste’ – the others being sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Researchers believe that umani, unlike the other four, is more resistant to the effects of altitude and ambient noise, so at 30,000 feet, the taste buds effectively welcome it more than the others.
Enter English celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, proprietor of The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, one of only four UK restaurants with three Michelin stars. Last year, saying, “You can’t load more salt but you can definitely up the umani” he also upped the anti beyond just TJ by convincing British Airways to introduce a new ‘umani-rich’ menu: Something that Air France and Lufthansa has since followed.
Others have jumped on the umani-wagon, suggesting that it may even be an antidote to deep vein thrombosis (DVT) – something that has not as yet been clinically proven, beyond of course the well-known fact that a few large Bloody Marys will make even the tightest economy seat feel a heck of a lot less uncomfortable: Research that I have personally gone to great lengths to validate.
DVT aside, my own theory is that the whole thing is more about the human tendency to behave like sheep than anything else. As I almost did last week, hearing someone say, “I’ll have a tomato juice please” I am highly likely to follow suit.
Accordingly I’d like to see some research into how many people order TJ in sequence and the chances are that if we can take out that first ‘umaniholic’ then together we can beat this thing!
In the meantime, if anyone is ever rude enough to ask me why I’m drinking tomato juice inflight, I now have my answer at the ready.
“Why, for the umani content of course!”
Like a lot of drinks however it’s the aftereffects that you really have to consider. And in this case, adding a short lecture on the wondrous benefits of a rich umani content in your food and drink should be more than enough to ensure that they don’t talk to you again for the duration of the trip.
A version of this article first ran 15 Jan 2015