Revealed: The shocking number of calories you eat on a flight

Many of us already cringe when we get our funky-looking in-flight meals placed in front of us on the tray table.

But while the meal is a necessity when it’s all that’s available at 34,000ft, it’s now been revealed they’re even worse for us than we thought!

A new book called Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating explains that meals served at altitude not only taste terrible but have way more calories than dishes served on the ground.

"The lower cabin air pressure, dry cabin air and the loud engine noise all contribute to our inability to taste and smell food and drink," says author of the book Professor Charles Spence.

"[Therefore] the food we consume needs 20-30 per cent more sugar and salt to make it taste like it would on the ground."

According to research the average passenger consumed 3400 calories — or 14,226 kilojoules — between take-off and landing.

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Despite including any pre-flight, deep-fried treats, a lot of those calories come from alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, but about 1900 of those calories are packed into the food.

The lecturer at Oxford University says there are also many other factors that cause people to eat more than usual while flying, including stress, boredom and TV.

“When we’re stressed we tend to eat more,” he explains.

"Then there is boredom. With nothing else to do, food becomes an appealing distraction.

"Another really big problem is the movie or television you watch. It is not uncommon to find people eating as much a third more food with the TV on."

And of course there’s our unwillingness to turn down free food — or food we’ve already forked out for — when it’s offered to us.

“It has been estimated that the British consume more than 3,400 calories between their check-in at the airport and their arrival at their destination,” the professor writes in his book.

That's more than double your recommended daily energy intake.

We’d hate to think how many calories Aussies are eating in the air, considering we live far away from everywhere!

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