I’m live-blogging my SAS EuroBonus SkyTeam Million Mile challenge this week. Click here for background and route information.
A shoutout to SAS for its delicious buy-on-board meals sold in economy class (and offered for free in its forward cabin) on short- and mid-haul flights. You can count on a delicious and healthy meal if you are hungry.
After the burger on the flight from London to Copenhagen, I ordered healthier meals for Augustine and me from Copenhagen to Malaga.
Among the choices, you can order a meat (pork or beef), fish, or chicken option, served with sides and crisp crackers.
What particularly impressed me was the kid’s meal. Far from the usual breaded chicken or macaroni and cheese (a nasty, fatty, carb-filled meal) here’s how SAS describes its kids’ meal:
KIDS’ MEAL
A freshly made meal made of chicken with penne pasta and vegetables (carrots and cucumbers) including a juice, crisp bread and a piece of chocolate. The meal has pure, clean flavors adjusted to the needs of our youngest travelers.
Yes! Thank you, SAS! This is what we need more of.
And Augustine loved it…it was the sort of healthy food he is used to eating at home and he ate it all (though oddly said he did not like the Froosh drink…). It cost $10.
I leaned toward ordering beef for me since it tends to come with a beet salad, which I love, but I am trying to limit my red meat consumption and just had the burger on the earlier flight, so I ordered chicken (14 USD).
CHICKEN MEAL
Delicious chicken dish prepared with a Scandinavian touch combined with influences from around the world. Served with locally sourced vegetables and potatoes and/or grains. Coffee and tea are always included.
It was a very nice dish with smoked chicken breast, picked cranberry and potato salad, sea-buckthorn-brined Savoy cabbage, and roasted pumpkin cream. I ate this as we approached Malaga and found it very satisfying.
You can order meals on SAS under “Reserve Meals” when you manage your reservation. These pre-orders can be placed up to 18 hours prior to your flight, which is quite flexible (most other carriers who offer food for sale cut off sales from 24-48 hours prior to departure). You pay in advance.
Well done, SAS. This is the sort of SAS distinctive that makes me more loyal.
I don’t know why US airlines can’t do this.
My thoughts exactly.
Because US airlines are focused on selling the cheapest, lowest quality food for the largest profit.
As they should as public companies. This great country was built on F’ing the consumer at every chance and laughing as they come back saying “Thank you sir, may I have another”.
Face it we are as addicted to the poor food and service as Aaron is to c#cks of all sizes and ethnicities in his orifices.
Aw, the closeted dude who is still obsessed with me, gay people, and gay sex is back. Someone needs a hobby…
STFU Aaron you know it’s true.
The only thing I know is that I seem to live rent free inside both of your heads, and that you are both somehow obsessed with me and like to project your kinky homoerotic fantasies onto me for some reason. It’s just so…weird.
Have you no self-respect and consideration for the fact that there may be kids who will read this blog, especially on topics that involve the travel of Matthew’s young son?
If you want to keep making these kind of references that are anything but appropriate for an audience now more likely to include young kids in elementary school (including Matthew’s son), perhaps you should reserve such comments to the comments sections of sites that don’t welcome minors.
No deal.
I am not looking at you making a deal. I am looking at you to see if you can look into yourself and be a real man and make the manly choice to protect young children from unnecessary exposure to graphic sexual content in a place where children are likely to be too,
As I have told you, NO DEAL.
Food in the US in general is not good. Sure you can find some restaurants but most use heavily processed meats and foods. Compare a sandwich you can get at most quick shops in a country like Germany to Subway, Jimmy Johns, Jersey Mikes or many restaurants and it is much fresher and of higher quality.
We’ve last the battle (if there was one) on having good food in restaurants and stores unless you make it on your own.
Next time you should try out airBaltic new pre order meals. You can get up to 10 items and mix and match what you like, kinda like SIA book the cook but only in Europe. Prices are kinda high but you pay for quality.
This looks awesome but the only reason Augustine liked it is because you and your wife did a great job at home making sure he is used to eat that type of healthy food. The problem with most US families is that they let their kids eat whatever crap they want at home so they will never even look at something like this on a plane. The other day I was at Costco and mentioned to my wife how much processed and unhealthy food they sell there. Her response: “Because that is what people want to buy it.” Sadly, she is correct.
If Costco sucks why were you there?
I was looking for your Christmas gift.
Even Jesus is giving you the side-eye for saying that.
Swedish parents of young kids tend to have:
much shorter commute times, much longer vacation times, much better allowances to take paid time off from work or work reduced hours, much cheaper daycares and after-school daycares for even school-going kids, and schools and daycares with included free meals from breakfast to lunch to afternoon snack time (with there often being a prohibition from bringing your own meals to school)
than is the case for American families.
All that “socialism” and the relative cheapness of unprocessed foods —when compared to processed foods — in Sweden and Denmark makes for healthier kids and healthier food habits.
Also, childhood obesity is getting worse across Scandinavia — and that’s not just in the poorer and poorer immigrant neighborhoods, although there is a correlation too in these parts between socio-economic background and obesity. It’s also a growing problem in rural areas with few to no immigrants.
Just was curious, in the ‘remote possibility’ of IROPS, and one is rebooked, and of course the meal doesn’t follow the pax and is not consumed by the pax, is their a refund ? Or does the pax ultimately ‘eat it’ ( the fee, that is ! ) …
And these meals put to shame the typical hot meal you’ll see on US carriers’ domestic flights.
We Swedes tend to eat healthy meals at home. Our diet is much different, not only of America but yes that of lower Europe too. Matthew … you and Heidi might have heard of one of our weekly customs called Lördagsgodis. Lördagsgodis (English: “Saturday sweets” or “Saturday candy”) is a Swedish tradition of children eating candy or sweets mainly or only on Saturdays. The Swedish custom of lördagsgodis, or Saturday candy, was spurred by the outcomes at Vipeholm, which definitively proved that sugar, particularly between meals, causes tooth decay. The idea behind lördagsgodis is moderation. Moderation is modus operandi in our daily lives.
Sweden households in the 2000s often remind me of what Indian households were like in the 1950s: the kids acted as if they were more or less prohibited from going into the food pantries and fridges/freezer without getting parental approval each and every time or that all food was to be served by parents. Maybe it’s a legacy of the farmer and struggling worker mentality that was the condition of these different countries for so very long — in the case of Sweden, it was a big driver for the rise of the Social Democrats with much of the population upset that the upper and upper middle class had all the goodies and that their own parents or grandparents were having to toil away in poor or subservient jobs.
American households tend to be more likely to let kids eat what they want when they want. We don’t have that “cookie-cutter”, hyper regimented approach that is the continuing legacy of farming and hard manual labor culture layered on with deeply-rooted jantelagen mentality (which ironically is heavily layered with extreme arrogance).
… and yes, American households eating habits tend to be a lot less healthy than Scandinavian household ones. There are various reasons for that.
It probably helps that a much higher proportion of young Swedish kids seem to have a parent back at home around 4-4:30pm during the workdays who are then able to make a dinner from scratch with unprocessed foods that are relatively cheaper in Sweden than in the US. It simply is not as practical for as high a proportion of middle income and lower income families in the US as it is in Sweden. The result is food habits tend to be better in Sweden than in the US from the very beginning of childhood. It also probably helps that infants in Scandinavia are much more likely to be breastfed and never dependent upon formula than is the case for infants in the US. In the US, way too much going with processed foods and way more artificial ingredients, and some would say that even goes back to the baby formula dependency levels in the US.
Flew SAS Plus a year ago from CPH-BCN (Non-rev). They upgraded me, and I got a meal included. Looks very similar to what you purchased, and was easily the best economy food I’ve ever had (mix of flavor vs health vs freshness). I was so shocked, and have since has many good meals is intra Europe J. I truly cannot comprehend how this is impossible in the US.
I don’t do the Froosh drinks. After the first one or two some years back, I don’t even crack off their sticker anymore.
About SAS Plus, 2 of my last 4 SAS Plus flights intra-Europe this month have had me end up in a middle seat, And on one of the 4, the middle seat next to me was occupied by a stranger.
Hopefully the middle seat problem will be resolved when SK brings back “business class” on intra-Europe flights. I’m also hoping, though not expecting, a return to ceramic dishes and glassware…
KLM still hasn’t brought back dishes and glassware though.