Eating chili and chocolate can help you reduce jetlag, as per study by Quantas

Travelling is stressful enough with keeping track of airport policy changes to avoid travel chaos while also ensuring you follow lesser-known travel safety tips such as not throwing away your boarding pass when you travel.

Along with the logistics, there are also health concerns you need to address, whether it be preventing constipation while travelling or ensuring that you can avoid jetlag and get a good night's sleep.

Jetlag refers to fatigue and other physical effects experienced after a long (usually international) flight when you travel across different a time zone. Everyone generally experiences it but imagine being able to reduce or even eliminate jetlag by eating the right foods? An airline is promising just that!

Quantas research on jetlag

As reported by Condé Nast Traveler, to help passengers, Quantas have just shared their findings on the foods which are the most effective in combating jetlag. Here are all the details.

Australian airline Quantas is launching new Project Sunrise flights which aims to provide its customers jetlag-free flights. For this, the airline conducted a year-long study to determine the optimum conditions, meal-times as well as foods that could help travellers feel fresh even as they arrive in a different timezone on the other side of the planet.

The research flights were conducted from New York and London to Sydney in 2019 in partnership with Australian researchers to collect passenger data. The findings shows that the following can help reduce jetlag: tailored cabin lighting schedules, integrating simple stretch and movement activities, timing of meal services as well as specific foods.

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Chocolate and chilli can help reduce jetlag

As per the Quantas report, using specific food items during the meals could help align the body clock to a different time-zone by impacting the wake and sleep patterns. As per the report, in the course of the research flight, the airline took the following step,

encouraged wake and sleep by using specific menu items including fish and chicken paired with fast-acting carbohydrates, as well as comfort foods like soups and milk-based desserts.

The aim was to promote the brain’s production of the amino acid tryptophan (‘Tryp’) to help passengers drift off more easily.

As Condé Nast Traveler states, these foods can encourage sleep or wakefulness include chocolate and chilli. So next time you have a long-haul flight to catch, you know what you should pack for jetlag free travel.

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Sources used:

Quantas: 'WORLD-FIRST RESEARCH SHOWS WAYS TO REDUCE JETLAG AHEAD OF QANTAS ‘SUNRISE’ FLIGHTS'

Condé Nast Traveler: 'These Two Foods Can Significantly Reduce Jet Lag, According to New Data From Qantas'