I'm ex cabin crew - the gluten free meal will be far closer to Paleo than the diabetic meal. Most diabetic meals will have gluten in them. Even the gluten free meal is likely to have a GF bread roll but the hot bit will most likely be fish/chicken breast & veggies. I'd make sure to have some jerky, fruit and nuts with you just in case you can't eat the meal.

Also, the quality of the meal depends very much on the airport. At some outstations a Gluten free meal was just a lump of cheese and an apple - rather embarrassing to serve.

How far are you flying? Anything less than 8 hours is an opportunity to get in some fasting.

Last time I flew overseas a couple months ago, I carried on 4 boiled eggs, ate those at the beginning of the evening flight, drank the complimentary glass of champagne (flying business class) and then told the flight attendent to please not wake me up for the meal service and went to sleep.

Woke up in Germany still paleo compliant :-)

I do not eat on airplanes. The food is not real food, so I wouldn't choose either plan. I just bring my own snacks. Afterall, there is no chance of me starving to death on the flight.

Have you ever spent much time on a Greyhound Bus? I did when I was younger. I say, go with the Greyhound Special: Fried chicken wrapped in aluminum foil. There is something magical about the smell of Fried Chicken mixed with Aluminum Foil with the scent of urine wafting through the air. Otherwise, take Air France. Their food is pretty good.

I travel a LOT, often 13 to 15 hour non-stop flights. I have tried to order all types of meals in all cabin classes - My verdict -- Do not order special meals unless you are really sick. If you are doing it just for a "staying Paleo" reason, do the following:

1: Short flights, overnight flights, redeye etc. - Eat well before you leave, In the Airplane keep yourself interestingly busy, take a book or a movie on your laptop or new music on your iPod.. whatever. Boredom is one of the main reason you turn your mouth into a garbage can. Try and sleep if you can, a glass of wine helps but remember to keep yourself well hydrated.

2: Long flights: Again, eat well before you leave - Take some of your own food. Pack variety not quantity. I have successfully tried all of foll: Boiled eggs, Jerky, nuts, lettuce wrapped bacon/tuna, Sardines, canned Mackerel, hard cheese, home made energy bars.. even protein shakes. The regular food the airline serves is generally better than their special meals. Invariably, A "Gluten free" meal on several different airlines is Corn bread that tastes like cardboard and a boiled bland chicken breast along with a very sugary dessert.

I don't eat on airplanes or in airports. Don't trust the food, and I can go 5 hours - or more if it's to Europe. To asia I might take a few hard boiled eggs and some cooked bacon.

Gluten free is the closest to paleo but still usually comes with yogurt and other dairy products. I tried kosher the last time I flew on reports that it was just a big piece of meat and a salad. THat was not the case. Lots of dinner rolls and tempting desserts. And breakfast was a muffin. Take your own snacks like hard boiled eggs still in the shells, trail mix and fruit. Also, if you don't mind eating it cold, I took frozen stir fry and ate it for breakfast once it was thawed.

My plane and travel snacks: cured meat. hard boiled egg. nuts. coconut. dark chocolate. chopped veg. blueberries. jerky. You're safe for a day + of non-refrigeration with this combo and can always pack on ice at the hotel if worried about your next leg. I learned to toss a few extras in to share with seatmates, a nice "in" aka bribe for mags when they're done with them :) I had to fly for business for 6-years and there's nothing worse than being at an airport where everything shuts at 8p and all you have is a water fountain. You only need that to happen once. Happy travels!

I wrestled with this recently as well, and did alot of internet searches to no avail.

I regularly travel 25 hours on flights and I can tell you this:

Especially if you are in business/first, but even if you are in coach, there is enough Paleo components served, and your energy expenditures are so low sitting in a seat for that long, that you are at more risk of excessive calories even eating the Paleo components of the standard meal.

Especially if you are taking a 24 hour trip that is going to be at least 2 segments where meals are served. For example, USA to Bangkok usually has a stop in Japan/Korea/Taiwan. You will be served a meal 1 hour before the end of the first segment, and 1 hour into the next segment, with usually (but not always) a 1-2 hour connection in between. Thats as little as 4 hours between 2 big business class meals. Again you are more at risk of overeating than not, even with not eating the whole plate!

If anything to control hunger, I brought high fat snacks with me: 90% cacao chocolate bars, mixed nuts, etc... I like the idea someone else mentioned of bringing hard boiled eggs. Fat is important here as it provides calories without increasing hunger-causing insulin spikes.

The few descriptions of gluten free meals I found on the net made me more concerned than having the standard meal as they had more components in the form of fruit, which WILL increase hunger.

The key is making sure you don't get hungry at all on eating a bit less food from the normal meal served, as I said above.

I always bring my own food. I have been on 9.5 hour flights and packed my own stuff. Airplane food is gross.

I generally can't and dont eat on planes, even special meals (vegan, kosher, never been offered the diabetic or gluten free meal)

If I do eat anything its the fruit, maybe some cheese if I'm up for it, and occasionally if they have nuts (not peanuts, but they are salted and toasted generally)...

I always bring stuff. Is it a long flight??

Neither option is good, in my opinion, considering the ADA recommended diet for diabetics (lol carbs) or gluten-free junk food loaded with carbs.

Ugh, don't eat on planes. The one time that I ordered a gluten-free meal, I was served a cold sliver of chicken breast that had to be 3 weeks old, with a wilted piece of lettuce and tomato, and a roll in a package that clearly stated wheat on the package ingredients. Bring your own food. It's not that long unless you are flying to Australia (unless you are in Australia of course)!

The question reminds me of the time I flew from San Francisco to London. A vegetarian was seated next to me. The attendant brought her a basket of rolls and other breads for breakfast.

Passenger: I say, do you have a bit of butter or jam to go with these, or are they pretty much on their own? Attendant (pretends to look in cart): No. Terribly sorry. Afraid they are on their own.

Check out airlinemeals.net, where people have posted photos of their meals.

A personal anecdote: just got back from France via Air France, and their gluten-fee option was also the low-lactose option. So, the meals were usually a small dish of protein (chicken or fish, no sauce), rice and veggies, a side salad of fruit or veggies, vanilla-flavoured soy pudding/yogurt thing, and rice crackers or rice cakes. Despite my hesitation to eat airplane fish, it didn't taste too bad.

Having said that, I probably wouldn't do it again, as the last meal I got was STILL FROZEN. Cabin crew wasn't all that helpful in trying to thaw it out, so I ate what bits I could.

I had the same issue on my recent Sydney-LAX flight and went for the GF option. What a mistake! Instead of providing naturally GF food, it was SAD food modified to exclude gluten. Cakes, bread, cereal, soy. The "normal" option got butter for their bread roll. I got healthy low fat margarine. I went very hungry.

Take 2 Tylenol PM's (or Ambien if you can get it) for each long leg of the flight and just sleep the entire time :) Nah, I've actually tried that and it didn't work out so well......

We're flying from Frankfurt to Portland next week and aren't too worried about it. It's a long flight, but we'll manage. We'll take our home-made snack bars, jerky, eggs, nuts, etc... and eat what we can from the kosher meals we ordered. I've had the best luck with kosher meals so far, but it seems others have not. It's just best to have some of your own food on hand to supplement whatever you get served.

The good diabetic plans contain foods which are high nutrition and low amount in sugar.

No plan. Most flights, don't need much if anything to get by. I take along some beef jerky and/or nuts...I'll bee good to go for hours.

I rarely fly, but am flying next week...I was just planning to make both trips fast days. I will pack some food in case a flight is delayed and I end up stranded in an airport where there is no food that I feel good about eating. I'll pack jerky,and maybe an avocado whole in a container to protect it. Before my IF days, I used to make a big salad with meat and hardboiled eggs in a small cooler. TSA only once gave me a hard time about having an ice pack in the cooler...I usually travel with my kids, and pack a days' worth of food for all of us...I used this to convince TSA to let me keep the icepack!

I'd give it 50/50 you even receive the gluten-free option and even then it's very unlikely to be good. I've ordered it and had the standard option end up having more things I could disassemble. Speaking of disassembly, you could always order a couple sandwiches or 3 snack boxes at $6-10 a piece and construct enough meat and veggies to create a human meal. On an expense account it's not a bad option. Just sayin'