“In 2010, Lufthansa worked with the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP to answer a variety of questions concerning inflight dining, among them, why passengers were ordering tomato juice onboard at an exaggerated clip. Fraunhofer’s scientists found that perceptions of saltiness and sweetness drop by as much as 30 percent onboard, due largely to the fact that our odor receptors (taste being largely a function of smell) are compromised in the bone-dry environment of an airplane cabin. This might make the salty-sweet punch of tomato juice more attractive to people who wouldn’t touch the stuff on the ground, but the impact on more subtle foods like seafood, chicken, and pasta can be devastating.”

– http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2013/the-fare-up-there/