Why It Pays to be Vegan at 35,000 Feet

Hear me out.

On British Airways, and I’m supposing on most airlines nowadays, you can log your meal preference online prior to your flight.

Always go vegan for two reasons: (1) Meat on a plane will always be chewy and overcooked. (2) You’ll avoid the cheese factor, i.e., when they use melted cheese to compensate for whatever’s underneath. This usually does the trick, except when it doesn’t. Like on a plane.

I think I made some enemies on that plane. My neighbors were casting jealous eyes at my meal as they tried to eat their rubber chicken and congealed heaps of lasagna. Or else it was just the general looks that vegans tend to get, being pariahs and all.

In the spirit of McSweeneys, here's a review:

Whole-grain pasta with marinara sauce: Packaged in an oval-shaped plastic container with a foil lid, the pasta had a deliciously doughy texture. It was topped with a too-sweet, too-salty marinara sauce that, in retrospect, may well have been ketchup. However, if you have a good imagination, you can close your eyes and banish the whole “ketchup” thing from your mind, and then it will really resemble the real thing. Which is the point with airline food – it’s not going to taste good, but it should at least resemble something edible.

Another thing: what meal was that supposed to be? My flight left at 10:30pm, and they served this meal at midnight. If you account for the time change from New York to London, the meal would be at 5 a.m., which still makes no sense. Awkward!

So you eat it even if you’re not hungry, simply because you want it out of your lap … especially when the girl in front of you decides to recline her seat until your tray table hits you in the ribs. True story.

Then they served breakfast right before we were going to land. Sadly, I ended up passing on the vegan donut. It had a “cinnamon soy glaze.” It looked as disgusting as it sounds, trust me.

One last thing:

“You know, I’ve been flying for 20 years or so, and that was one of the roughest approaches yet. So … yes. Um, thanks for flying British Airways.”

(Our pilot, right after we landed in London. I'm still trying to figure out why he felt the need to tell us this. "You should feel lucky that I'm such a great pilot, or else you would all be dead"?)

Right now, I am drinking peppermint tea in Heathrow. I have nothing to do for the next few hours, so I thought: when in London, drink tea.