Airlines are all over the map in terms of what food they will offer, if any, on flights. Some lines stick to small packages of peanuts or pretzels, while others offer snack packs (that usually have to be purchased) or, in a few cases, full meals. The Diet Detective did a little investigating and found out, from a nutritional standpoint, which airlines are giving out food worth eating and on which flights you're better off bringing a snack from home.

• United - offers variety and healthy choices in four different meal types, Smartpack, 895 cal; Minimeal, 560 cal; Quickpick, 655 cal; Ritebite, 625 cal. The Smartpack and Ritebite are your most balanced options.
• Continental Airlines - doesn't have all the options that United does, but the meals are definitely health-oriented with pretzels and sandwiches made with low-fat mayo. Turkey, 285 cal; Ham, 316 cal.
• JetBlue - has a number of individually packaged, portion-controlled snacks, including Nabisco 100 calorie packs, Doritos Munchies Mix, Mrs. GoodCookie Jungle Crackers, All Nuts Jumbo Cashew Halves.
• American Airlines - skip the breakfast muffin, but the meat, nuts, raisins and cheese in the 710-calorie snack pack are filling.
• US Airways - offers a fairly low calorie snack pack (470 cal), but lacks any real nutritional punch. Try the fruit/nut mix and skip the rest
• Delta Air Lines - again, the fruit and nuts are worth eating in Delta's snack pack, but the rest of the 766 cal meal can easily be skipped.

We have an in-flight food guide that we posted a couple of weeks ago to help Slashfood readers know what they're in for food-wise on several major airlines this summer. This week, the Wall Street Journal actually took to the skies to taste-test some of the meal options on various airlines. Dubbed the "unfree lunches," since you now almost always have to pay for meals and snacks when you fly.

Many of the "snack" boxes contained little food for the shocking amount of calories they contained, and the exact calorie count could not always be determined, since single-serving "cheeses" were often unlabeled. Overall, you'd do best to pass on the "insultingly skimpy" snack box from ATA ($3), which garnered the "worst snack box" award. United Airlines Right Bite Box ($5), by contrast, was voted the "best snack box" because their selections were "smart," reasonably healthy and stocked with popular brands - including organics. Air Canada was praised for their excellent muffin ($2) and offering of Subway veggie sandwiches ($5). As for the rest? Let's just say that packing your own snack is always a good idea.

I don't mean put tiny packets of honey roasted peanuts and a vacuum-packed bag of wilted celery cticks in a flimsy box and charge yourself $4.95.

Conde Nast Traveler magazine challenged chef Gene Kato of Chicago restaurant Japonais to create an in-flight meal that was spoil-proof for three hours, leakproof, and didn't stink strongly enough to disturb your neighboring traveler (Conde Nast used the word "odiferous"). It couldn't be too difficult for something Japanese-inspired, since the concept of mobile food in bento boxes comes from Japan. Chef Kato created Miso-glazed Fried Chicken with Japanese Truffled Soybean Salad. The recipe is on Conde Nast's website.

I challenge Chef Kato to make something to take on a Korean Airlines flight that's not "odiferous." Kimchee anyone?

[via: Gadling]

Airline food is fast going the way of the dodobird, what with rising gas prices, suffering airlines, slashed business travel, and the all-over belt-tightening. You could sneak your own lunch in... or you could celebrate All That Is Airline Food while it still lasts.

Celebrate, for instance, along with Danburg Murmur, whose airline food photoset on Flickr is a personal tribute to his many in-flight meals. Sure, it's not as complete as the astounding AirlineMeals.net pointed out to us by Nick Vagnoni. But it's more manageable. Discover the "Byte-sized Fare" of Southwest Airlines (plus Golden Oreos, hmm), the interesting pickled veggies and sandwich meats from Bangkok Air, and the lovely veggie lasagna from KLM pictured here. Almost makes me want to fly to Amsterdam...

[via del.icio.us]