Roaches, mice and mold: What is happening to airplane food?

The transatlantic flight from London departed at breakfast time, and Joyce Beadling was hungry. Her friend warned her that the fruit salad tasted funny. But, trapped on a plane for hours, she had few options. So she ate her meal, plus her friend’s produce. The following evening, she regretted it. “It felt like my guts were being ripped out,” said Beadling, 69, a retired nurse from Rochester, Minnesota. Beadling believes the meals on her Sept. 22 Delta Air Lines flight landed her in the emergency room. Her pal, Catalina Lewis, 45, also fell ill and tested positive for three types of E. coli, according to results she shared with The Washington Post. The Minnesota travelers are two more voices in a growing chorus of groans over airplane food. Though the airlines serve thousands of harmless meals a day, several incidents this year have turned travelers’ stomachs. These issues are more serious than the usual complaints about flavorless dishes and limited options, exposing problems with safety standards and quality control. The same concerns have fueled Americans’ widening distrust of the food system; The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently linked E.coli to raw onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and listeria to Boar’s Head deli meat. Story lists some recent in-flight meal offenses. Such egregious failings are rare, but food safety experts say tainted airplane food could be more ubiquitous than reported. “Airline passengers should be aware of food safety issues in the in-flight catering industry,” Darin Detwiler, a food safety adviser and associate teaching professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said by email, “because the confined nature of airplane travel makes foodborne illness outbreaks especially challenging to manage.”<br/>