The air diet

Consider this a public service announcement made well in advance of the holiday season: if you're flying, prepare to pack a lunch.

Obviously, this will be an issue if you're on an all-liquid diet -- unless you're careful to pack your meal in several tiny 1-oz. bottles -- but for the rest of us, it makes financial sense. We all know that airport concessions are pricey. And most airlines are charging for food. Read "Hungry at 3000 Feet? Pay Up" (NYT, Aug 17, 08) and weep at the prospect of paying $10 for a sandwich and chips the next time you fly American to Hawai'i.

I am a little surprised that many personal finance blogs have not tackled the issue of eating well and cheaply while flying. In searching for airplane food alternatives, I found an article from Salon that seems positively quaint with its pre-9/11 assumptions ("Mile-High Meal," Sep 2, 97) and not at all budget-conscious. My own personal recommendations for eating whilst in the air are after the jump.

Do bring an empty water bottle with you through security. I like this one (at left), because it's got a wide mouth and a sippy straw. Pre-flight, I just buy a cup of ice from an airport vendor and use that to fill up my bottle with ice (most places are chill about refills, so I just refill the cup a few times). Then I buy one of the big (and inevitably warm) bottles of water the newsstand sells. Et voila! I have abundant, cool water to drink throughout the flight. It's the only time those price-gougers at the airport get my money.

Do not count on having lap room or utensils at 10,000 feet. Why no lap room? Because you will inevitably be seated behind someone who eases the seat back until you're staring at his hairline. Also, you will be seated next to someone who is so zealous about her claim on the seat arm between you, she takes the slightest shift of your body as the opening salvo in the war for dominance of Aisle 27.

So everything you eat must be finger-friendly. It must also tolerable at room temperature, as it will have been sitting in your carry-on for at least two hours. And if you're not a self-centered monster, you'll also want to make sure it's not terribly pungent. Unless, of course, the lady draped all over what should have been a shared armrest really deserves a snootful of garlic-meets-goat cheese odor.

Do plan on bringing your own storage containers. Unless, in addition to the finger-friendly, room-temperature and not-too-stinky rule, you also want to add "Can withstand the rigors of the TSA's baggage inspection." This rule also helps you feel like you're amortizing the cost of your Tupperware.

Do also include a wipe if you can. You can keep this in a zipper-top baggie to stay moist, and use the baggie to collect any trash. Or reuse the baggie. Your call. But the wipe is a nice postprandial touch.

Enough jibber-jabber -- on to the foods! Pack some protein because it'll keep you sated, pack some fiber because it'll keep you fuller longer, and pack some dessert because you need something to live for and God knows that heavily-edited Kate Hudson movie the airline will be showing isn't going to do it.

My ideal finger-friendly protein would be pickled herring, but we've already talked about odor issues, so ... the considerate and ideal win for protein would be little meatballs. You could probably even sneak in a toothpick or two if you wanted to get fancy.

However, most of us aren't whipping up meatballs in the pre-trip flurry, so find a plan B. I like cheese. Many cheeses are improved at room temperature anyway.

You can do a bastardized caprese with some string cheese, cherry tomatoes and chiffonaded basil pre-sprinkled with cracked black pepper, or you can go with one of my favorite snacks ever, some Digestive biscuits with sliced apple and Wensleydale cheese layered on top. Or make yourself a little antipasto container with some sliced dry sausage, cheese and olives or grapes. If you can't stand cheese, then maybe some hummus in a pita? It's tidy and tasty and only a little garlicky.

(Okay, fine, there is also the sandwich option, but seriously, you could put that sandwich container to much better use. One sandwich or eight Digestive-Wensleydale-apple stacks? You make the call.)

I also recommend bringing some vegetables on board with you. The fiber and the water are both helpful on flights. As to whether or not you want to bring some dip -- your call. I avoid it.

A note on fruit: I have tried bananas (peels = pains), stone fruit (cherries = the pits), citrus (see note about banana), sliced apples (the heartbreak of browning!), sliced melon (very juicy), grapes and berries. The grapes and berries tend to work best, lacking as they do pits, peels, surplus juiciness and the deplorable tendency to brown the minute you even look at a knife. Oh, I'll eat my apple slices, but I don't look at them.

And a note on snacky foods: they'll make you thirsty and they're crumbly. While salty foods can be comforting and stomach-calming on flights, they also boost your dehydration risk, and given that you're in the moisture-sucking (and will-to-live-sapping) airplane environment already, why parch yourself? Promise yourself a bag of Doritos upon landing.

And finally, dessert. I personally don't think things like M&Ms are a good idea because I would end up dropping one, accidentally sitting on it whilst looking for it, then exiting the flight with a chocolate smear in the most embarrassing area possible. But you're probably more coordinated. I like some non-tiny dark chocolate bar or some homemade cookies. This is a reward for your foresight and effort in packing ahead.

Truth be told, if I think I can get away with it on a plane, I'll eat it. I've brought room-temperature pad thai, a bag of Cracklin' Oat Bran (I swigged milk as a chaser), cold pizza from my fridge and a bag of leftover turkey from a holiday dinner. Just make sure it's finger-friendly and you can eat it while furtively hunched over like an escaped prisoner trapped in a sewer. Doesn't that sound more appetizing than a $5 snack box?

Comments

[Kyle]

I'll go you one further on the empty water bottle -- rather than buy water I fill mine at water fountains inside security. And I recently discovered that it's a good idea to take the water bottle out of the bag and put it in one of the x-ray tubs, since apparently an empty water bottle can look a lot like a full water bottle in the x-ray machine.

And I love unsalted and lightly-salted nuts for travelling. Well, not just for travelling, basically any time. Mmm, roasted almonds. And they've got fiber and protein!

[Dellface]

This just reminds me how long it's been since I've been on an airplane and how I really don't miss flying every week like I did for 4 years. Ugh! But maybe someday soon I'll get myself on an airplane headed west to visit you, Lisa. Someday!

[Jecca]

Thanks for this post! The right airplane food is a quest for me (like packing light; I aspire to onebag.com ease), even though I only fly maybe once a year. I have this Apartment Therapy post bookmarked in my delicious -- don't know if you've seen it:http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/brown-bag-meals/what-foods-can-you-carry-on-the-plane-048116

[B.Loppe]

If you're into making bento lunches, you can adapt most of the techniques to disposable containers, or use bento boxes that collapse/nest when empty.
Then you can pack a variety of foods that look a lot more like what we used to get on airplanes - a small serving of protein, some rice or noodles or a small roll, and 2 or three different kinds of veg. This is helpful if you're going to be travelling for 20 hours the way I mostly seem to. You can still eat them on your lap if necessary. If you do bring your tupperware or bento boxes, you can stuff the smaller ones in your purse and bring them to restaurants to take your leftovers in countries where that isn't de rigeur like Italy.

[Tracy]

Awesome topic!

Wet Ones makes a lemony hand wipe in travel onesies. I buy a box to keep at home, and then tuck three or four in my various carry-on pockets. You can wipe your mouth and hands, and then wipe off the seat-back tray of any crumbs or cack so that you can read or work on it afterward. If the seat-back tray is really filthy, sometimes I'll use a wipe on it before dining.

Also, an even posher clean-up option: a company called Giovanni makes a variety pack of onesie towelettes to go, in three scents: lavender, grapefruit and peppermint. For post-airplane-meal, these are practically a civilized toilette. I get them at my neighborhood (regular, not-fancy) grocery; they come in a silvery zip bag, on the soap aisle.

I can't coordinate in advance well enough to execute a full meal, but I do have a few carry-on snack stand-bys: apples (I don't slice), any of the Nabisco 100-calorie packs, Luna Bars, dried cranberries, carrots, Laughing Cow Babybels (in the red wax, v. finger-friendly!), unsalted almonds, "turkey packs" (I get my grocery deli guy to package sliced turkey into individual 4-oz bags, which then take a micro-second to grab and go -- not just for travel but pre-portioned for having around the house for lunches/snacks).

Whatever I plan to bring on for snacks, I pack in a recycled plastic grocery bag. Plastic gives a bonus protect to the interior of my carry-on from any leaks or crumbs... easy to pull just the sack out from the carry-on (without having to pull the whole bag out from under seat in front of you), and then the empty bag can become your trash container (for your snack wrappers, dirty wipes, magazine inserts, mint wrapper and whatever other refuse you accumulate during the flight). Then, I just hand my sack to the attendant when they make final trash pass prior to descent. Pack it in, pack it out.

I confess that this is less about my need to be ecologically sound and more about disgust that people will blithely cram their smelly Burger King sack in the seat-back pocket, or leave cracker crumbs in their seat, or sticky soda spills on the tray. Of course, in a perfect world, there should be a clean-up crew between flights -- but on a delayed schedule when they just want to get off the ground, sometimes that cleaning becomes a lick and a promise... and having to wallow for four hours in someone else's filth makes an already unpleasant experience even more so.

[ginger]

If you are feeling particularly reduce-reuse-recycle virtuous, and you have laundry facilities at your destination, you can carry a damp washcloth in your ziplock instead of a packaged towelette. I carry a separate 2 oz. bottle of hand sanitizer because I find it impossible to clean my hands properly in an airplane restroom and keep them clean getting out the door.

I carry dried fruit and nuts instead of fresh fruit, since I'm going to have to drink a ton of water to stay anything like hydrated anyway.