SIA to offer healthier meals, seasonal ingredients, sustainable produce in new menu
Enjoy a salad harvested only a few hours before the plane takes off on selected Singapore Airlines flights from September 2019.
Healthier dishes such as the Chilean seabass on a bed of kale and quinoa salad are already available in Suites, First and Business Class. (Photo: Singapore Airlines)
One week after announcing its partnership with COMO Shambhala, Singapore Airlines (SIA) rolled out an entire slew of dishes aimed at health-conscious travellers.
The move is part of SIA’s ongoing in-flight wellness programme, which started in 2016 when healthier-choice meals were made available.
In a statement released to the media on Thu (Mar 21), SIA’s Executive Vice President Commercial Mak Swee Wah explained that “Customers are increasingly mindful about their diet and the type of ingredients that go into their meals, and using fresh produce that’s in season as well as a lighter cuisine style are becoming more important in helping health-conscious customers feel more refreshed after their flights.”
Mak added that “Our International Culinary Panel [ICP] chefs are on board the wellness movement with their own creations to enable travellers to eat just as healthily in the air as on the ground.”
SIA’s ICP chefs include Sanjeev Kapoor of India, Georges Blanc of France, Matt Moran of Australia, Suzanne Goin of the United States, Alfred Portale of the United States, Zhu Jun of China, Carlo Cracco of Italy and Yoshihiro Murata of Japan.
Among the changes that travellers can expect when the new menus are introduced in September 2019 are a lighter cuisine style, for example substituting cream and butter with olive oil as the base for soups. The chefs will also explore the use of lighter sauces and alternative starches such as farro, millet, bulgar and freekeh.
For example in Spring, gourmands can look forward to ingredients such as morel mushrooms, firefly squid, pea shoots and asparagus.
The new seasonal menus will be made available to travellers in Suites, First Class and Business Class.
Addressing travellers’ concerns over produce origins, SIA announced that it will source its greens from AeroFarms, the world’s largest indoor vertical farm of its kind based in Newark, New Jersey. Produce at AeroFarms is grown indoors without soil, pesticides or sunlight, using the farm’s award-winning aeroponic technology.
AeroFarms will provide a customised blend of fresh produce for SIA’s Newark to Singapore flights. “Imagine boarding a plane and enjoying a salad harvested only a few hours before takeoff – literally the world’s freshest airline food,” said SIA’s Food & Beverage Director, Antony McNeil.
As for other flights departing Singapore, the airline currently sources a number of produce from two local farms, and is working to identify local vertical farms to work with. Other ingredients obtained from sustainable sources include selected locally farmed fish from fisheries that are certified by Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP).
For travellers who are eco-conscious in addition to being health-conscious, take heart that SIA is forging ahead in its bid to reduce single-use plastics, by replacing them with sustainable materials. The airline’s goal is to become plastic-straw free by Sep. These will be substituted by paper alternatives.
Plastic swizzle sticks will also be replaced by wooden ones. From May 2019, polybags used to contain children’s toys will be swapped with recyclable paper packaging.
