I’m going to be completely honest with you: I still don’t really understand what gluten is. The only things I know about gluten are that for a while we thought it was bad for everyone, then it turned out it’s actually just bad for some people, and also that it’s in nearly everything. In medical terms, if you are gluten intolerant or are coeliac, you are pretty much fucked.
While it might seem like it’s impossible to construct a meal out of actual food without entering gluten into the equation, it is absolutely possible, and it is absolutely possible to make a meal that is more than just a singular banana.
We’ve all heard and made jokes about airline food. It’s not what anyone would call “good” but the meals are traditionally, well, meals at least. A banana is not a meal. As a food item, it can constitute part of a meal, it is not, in itself, a meal.
THIS is not a meal:
Pictured: Sadness.
What it is (again, not a meal) is what 32-year-old British man Martin Pavelka received after ordering the gluten-free meal on a 9-hour flight from Tokyo to Sydney.
Pavelka, who has coeliac disease, said he was a bit surprised:
“As a coeliac, I always order gluten-free meals on my flights. Sometimes they are bland, sometimes they are actually much better than the ordinary meal service.“On this flight, I was left literally speechless. One single banana arrived.”
Understandably, he thought he might have been the victim of a weird, cruel prank at the hands of the All Nippon Airways staff:
“When the stewardess came to me, she said ‘we’ve got a special meal for you‘ and I got the banana.“I asked ‘is this a joke?’ She just said ‘I’m really sorry, that’s the gluten-free meal‘.”
As you can see from the picture, they were at least kind enough to give him a cutlery packet with a knife, a fork and a sachet of salt, which would come in handy if in addition to being coeliac he was also a complete weirdo who ate bananas wrong.
What is the deal with airline food.
Source: Evening Standard.
Photo: Martin Pavelka.
