Gluten free airline food: flying from Canada to the UK

Airline food has never really been that nice. Although there are a lot of challenges in creating food to serve to an aircraft full of people, things haven't particularly improved in the nearly 30 years I've been flying.

I've been served unwrapped wheat bread rolls dumped on top of the gluten free main meal container; been offered cakes, muffins, cookies, and pastries; and things wrapped in clingfilm purporting to be gluten free, but without any ingredients listed how would I know they really were?

My recent flight from Canada to the UK, using Air Canada, was yet another celebration of abominable gluten free airline food.

The hot meal was chicken in an unidentified really nasty smelling sauce—I don't do sauces unless I know exactly what's in them. Something that looked suspiciously like bulgar wheat was in a little plastic tub, again with no ingredients or label identifying what it was, and an unidentified bread roll that was so hard it should have been confiscated at security as a potential weapon.

The only saving grace was a manufacturer wrapped Patsy Pie cookie, listing all its ingredients on the packaging, and the only thing I ate from the meal—absolutely delicious.

The light snack/breakfast was a rice cake snapped in half filled with a limp leaf of lettuce and piece of chicken. Plus a tub of something green and sludgy that looked possibly made from lentils. The highlight was a packaged piece of melba toast whose first ingredient was... WHEAT!

Airline food producers, when you produce gluten free meals take note that what celiacs want to know is WHAT'S IN IT!!!

It appears that as airline prices continue to rise no effort is made to improve the food—especially allergy related options. In the past, complaining to Air Canada about wheat containing ingredients in gluten free meals has only been met with "tough... suck it up" responses.

When flying I always take a bag of safe gluten free food to last the flight duration, and while airline food is so careless and anti-dietary friendly it appears that I'll be packing bags of food for a long time to come yet.