Delta’s Biscoff cookies were supposed to be temporary | Hacker News Reader

Delta’s Biscoff cookies were supposed to be temporary

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> a peanut shortage prompted Delta, then America’s fourth-largest airline, to seek an alternative onboard snack

I never knew this was the reason. I had assumed that airlines stopped serving peanuts as an accomodation to the increasing number of people with peanut allergies.

It's both. That's why Southwest stopped, for instance. Literally just opening a small bag of peanuts around people who aren't eating peanuts is enough to bring someone with a severe allergy into anaphylactic shock.

That is not true:

https://www.aaaai.org/allergist-resources/ask-the-expert/ans...

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Homework shows you are right.

The American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology disagrees, which I'm surprised by and totally thought they could too. Someone linked to this in another thread.

> What can occur is that the patient smells an allergen, and that smell triggers a strong memory of a past reaction or the fear of having a reaction and signs and symptoms of panic may occur – including an increase in heart rate, tight breathing, flushing of the skin and nervousness, all of which could be mistaken as signs and symptoms of anaphylaxis. ... While smells can linger in the air, the allergen proteins do not, which is why smelling a food will not trigger anaphylaxis.

Interestingly some allergens like those in shellfish /can/ aerosolize in a boiling pot, however according to them peanuts cannot. I can still absolutely see airlines reacting to passengers thinking they're having attacks and eliminating peanut snacks out of caution and to avoid the issues even an imagined attack can cause on a flight. That and the risk of surface contamination probably?

https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-librar...

edit: dang scooped by 5 minutes.

I think the key part is the _boiling pot_.

Yeah that's definitely the issue with the shellfish. I'm just more surprised the allergen is sufficiently different from the smell that they are disconnected in peanuts.

I suspect that peanut boiling in a pot would also be problematic. The oil and water vapor and would provide a carrier.

I also suspect there's not much reason to boil peanuts in water outside of the very specific (and delicious) snack called boiled peanuts. I can't really think of any other dish that uses them as a normal ingredient. Most of the time you'd toast them in oil for dishes or use peanut oil afaik.

In Indian Cuisine, peanuts are sometimes boiled, and are indeed delicious

Boiled peanuts are staples at baseball games in the south. They are so good.

I love boiled peanuts and I'm always tempted on roadtrips to grab some when I go through areas where they appear as gas station snacks. Usually that's when I'm down into South Carolina or farther south.

There are quite a few dishes that use peanuts as an ingredient. Satay sauce for example.

I ended up in the hospital after walking by my roommate who was washing off a knife with peanut butter on it in hot water in the sink. I just inhaled a single breath of steam and in minutes I couldn't breathe!

My first thought here would be to blame "solid" particles of peanut butter flung into the air by blasting them with a water stream, unrelated to temperature

That does sound like something that would be a real issue, but only in close proximity

Molecules responsible for smells tend to be small, on the order of 100-300 Daltons—otherwise they aren’t able to diffuse easily in the air.

The vast majority of allergens, on the other hand, are proteins, with the very smallest proteins being on the order of 1 kiloDalton. Large proteins get up into hundreds to thousands of kDa.

Yes, the panic attack thing is pretty real. Know someone that had a severe allergic reaction, basically started choking to death, paramedics involved, all that. The experience imprinted itself deeply, such that she's deathly afraid of it happening again, and gets triggered with panic attacks. She's like two years on from the experience and through a lot of work she's much better, but it's pretty crazy how broadly it has impacted her life as an anxiety disorder. She knows it's not logical, but describes it as a fear of death and of a spiraling nature such that if she can't arrest it in the moment it compounds very badly, which reinforces the phenomenon - panicking about panicking. Anxiety over a panic reaction. So to be clear, it's not an allergic reaction she's experiencing but trauma from one in the past.

When I told my doctor about my oldest having a reaction to a chocolate bar with peanuts, one of his first questions was "did he react before he knew it had peanuts?"

He's pretty anxious about food in general, so it actually made a lot of sense.

Yeah, if I almost died from something I imagine I would have the same response.

I'm not sure it's fair to describe that fear response as "not logical."

It's not logically thought out, emotion is a parallel decision making process to logical thought. It may be that in some circumstances, fear is a logical outcome of a stimulus, but that's not the same thing.

> emotion is a parallel decision making process to logical thought.

No it's not. We know for a fact this is not true.

Here's an interesting story (but you can also find ample published literature on it, or even just like... think about how brains work): https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/reasonably-emotional

No, we don't know that is true. First that is a theory, and heavily criticized by some:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage#Somatic_marker_hy...

Second having brain damage and being incapable of processing emotion, doesn't mean that the rest of the brain hasn't been affected. In other words, a brain with an inability to process emotion, may also have an inability to process logical thought outcomes unrelated to the loss of emotional processing.

But look... the brain is complex. It's not some sort of pre-planned construct, as I'm sure you know it's an evolved organ, layered, complex. For example, memory imprint seems to be heavily impacted by emotion. Note that I'm not saying "only formed by", but impacted.

It's why you get PTSD, and it makes sense. Think mouse set upon by cat, the mouse naturally was exceptionally fearful, panicking, adrenaline, and it's very important that the mouse associates any reference to 'cat' with 'fear' and 'apprehension'. So the concept that emotion can fix survival important memories into memory, is seemingly a sensible one.

Yet for all of this, we can lay down knowledge and retain it without a cat standing over our shoulder. Realistically, we have multiple decision making processes, and ways to store memory, and so on, running in parallel.

Parallel also doesn't mean, by the way, that one cannot be affected by the other. You can use one decision making process to affect another. You can quell emotional response with reason, and emotional response can quell logical thought. Again, complex.

Effectively, what I'm saying here is that this is a complex topic. And that I'm sticking with my rendition, whilst explaining that 'parallel' doesn't imply 'isolated'.

By the way, fun 30 minute dive into that book/author/articles, thanks for the link.

Why are you not sure?

To me it seems like if they logically know the smell can not cause harm having a strong emotional fear reaction is illogical. Of course most emotions are so that's not meant to be a blame or anything...

Because it means you're in the immediate vicinity of a thing that can kill you and has nearly killed you before?

Is it fair to call it "illogical" to panic when someone puts a bag over your head when you were previously kidnapped and almost murdered after someone put a bag over your head?

To add some clarification - the event has caused general anxiety and risk of panic attacks, such that even driving down streets or flying on planes as she's done a thousand times before starts filling her with anxiety and panic. It's the panicking about panicking which has expanded the scope beyond just being in the identical scenario as before. That's the part that she recognizes as illogical - driving down the street shouldn't cause anxiety, as she's done it without incident many times before. There are no new identifiable dangers or risks. But it's a combination of intrusive thoughts, physical reactions, all that, which can spiral. Being on the outside it's very hard for me to comprehend, but there's a sense of no control over the chain reaction. There are techniques she has adopted, like using the DARE app regularly and other therapy techniques which have helped unwind this, but it takes a long time. Time is a damn good healer though.

Yes. In fact, last time I checked (4 years ago), no one has ever had a reaction from (for example) kissing someone who just ate peanut butter too, which for a while everyone claimed could case a reaction. There was a reported case 12+ years ago in Montreal, but it was soon retracted as a mistake.

I personally have definitely had a reaction from kissing someone after they ate peanuts, just not full-blown anaphylaxis.

This explains a lot. I always wondered why airlines eliminated peanuts but never ask passengers to avoid eating peanut products they'd brought on themselves, and why peanut based foods can be so common in public if there are "airborne peanut allergies".

I have been on several flights in the last couple of years where the flight attendants have asked that no one open/consume peanuts or peanut snacks while on board due to a passenger with a severe allergy.

All considering for the person affected (and my desire to not end up at an alternate airport for hours/overnight) has always seemed like an easy thing to do.

Many airlines do that if they know if there is someone with a not allergy on the flight.

I guess I just don't fly enough to have experienced it yet.

Well, according to the AAAAI, "airborne peanut allergens" are not actually a thing.

I'm all for consideration for others, especially when crammed into a tight space for hours on end, but once we get into the realm of purely psychological effects, where do we draw the line? For example, there are people that are absolutely convinced that my phone's electromagnetic radiation will cause them discomfort, yet in-flight Wi-Fi is a thing.

To be clear, I'm totally on board with limiting common allergens in airplane food, but please let me eat my own peanuts in peace instead of further facilitating mass hysteria.

> The American Academy of [...] disagrees ...

> I can still absolutely see airlines reacting to passengers thinking ...

That, plus a dozen other scenarios which airlines do not want paying out in their airplanes. Or even post-flight, if some lawyer wanted to argue that the fatal peanut fell into mommy's purse during her flight back home to her family.

Even though I know this, smelling peanuts (especially peanut butter) makes me intensely uncomfortable and I'm happy they're not served on most flights anymore. I'm not trying to ban anyone from taking their own peanuts on the flight (although I wish they wouldn't) but not needing to worry about it coming from the airline is a huge load off my mind.

Also, thinking as the airline, I'd do anything possible to avoid causing anaphylaxis on a flight, starting by simply removing common allergens from the menu. In the modern world, pretty much the only times an anaphylaxis attack would actually threaten my life would be camping in the wilderness and on a flight. Anaphylaxis has a great survival rate if you have an epipen and can get to a hospital quickly, and if you can't it's all down to how bad your allergy is and what meds you have available. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't bring on a flight the steroids that I'd bring camping, and I doubt the airplane has a supply either.

At least if you are in the USA they do keep epinephrine in the medical kits onboard. It’s an FAA requirement

Dust can also be an issue. It's definitely a cause of concern for pistachios, where cracking the shells releases enough pistachio dust to cause skin rash to my allergic daughter, even though she's never touched a pistachio in her life. Cracking shelled peanuts can likely cause the same issue, I'd wager.

Although peanuts served in planes are not in the shell, I can imagine how having potentially allergic people in close contact to people potentially oblivious to allergy issues eating peanuts sitting right next to them and eating peanuts could be problematic.

Thank you, I always found that story hard to believe, despite flight attendants confidently repeating it on PA. My most bizarre experience was when they one time announced a "very, very special guest among us today", which turned out to be somebody "so allergic to peanuts, if anybody anywhere on the plane opens any food containing peanuts, they will go into anaphylactic shock IMMEDIATELY, so please don't"...

I took a flight inside Mexico (Mexico City to Oaxaca) recently and the in-flight service snack was bagged peanuts. I was so amused, it was almost shocking to see. And, good news, no one died, but I assume if it was on a plane in US there probably would've been a strong emotional reaction by at least one person. It's good to know that the "Airborne anaphylaxis" is not a thing.

Many nations are finally pushing back on Americanism and finding themselves again.

As an American, I say good! Every country should have their own identity.

I still would not appreciate having airborne panic attacks on a plane.

My buddy's gf is allergic to peas.

She visited a friend's house and started getting an itchy throat immediately. Friends knew of her allergy and obviously hadn't prepared any.

Turned out the dog food had peas in it and the bag was open on the other end of the house in the kitchen. (And a supporting role from whatever the dog had slobbered on in the living room)

Sometimes it blows me away how sensitive our bodies can be.

Dog food is probably particularly prone to creating particles that she could breath because it is essentially pellets of powder

> Sometimes it blows me away how sensitive...

Yes, but consider that we're all descended from people who survived diseases like smallpox. Repeatedly.

And how few nanograms of smallpox virus are needed for LD50, to weed out the insensitive immune systems.

Yet they have no problems with animals on flights with people who are deathly allergic, and have no way to guarantee you will not be put on such a flight, especially when last minute changes happen frequently.

Really miss the airline peanuts. Was such a nice treat.

Have you heard of Biscoff spread? It's kinda like peanut butter except, it's made out of cookies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BZsIY6PUPU (might not be sfw)

Yea, I once brought some to game night, and another gamer brought actual Biscoff cookies. Then a third person put them together into a sandwich cookie which I thought was equal parts funny and violating some kind of Kosher rule "Do not seethe a kid in it's mother's milk" I invented in my head.

We’ve strayed further. Sometimes we take the meat of a chicken, bathe it in its eggs, dip it in bread crumb, and shape it in the form of its ancestors.

Dino nuggies are worth it though…

Getting close to oyakodon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyakodon

Just had that when visiting japan, wanted to order food to the hotel using Uber Eats, and everything’s in Japanese. So I translated it. Seeing parent and child bowl made it an immediate buy!

And don't forget the mayochip to dip it in!

My friends and I stumbled into this as it's own food category and I wish I could remember the stranger ones.

I think you can actually buy biscoff sandwich cookies that are essentially this.

You can! And they're delicious.

This has been a Belgian children's breakfast staple for generations. Some dunk them in milk before putting them on bread. Those with a more sophisticated palate might use coffee or hot chocolate instead.

That + coffee is the original spread. Just the way the cookie crumbles.

Wife got the same thing but it’s Oreo cookie spread. The stuff is crack.

This is usually the first thing I think of when I think of f**InG BiScoFf.

Wow you must really like them

ChocZero makes a zero sugar version of the speculoos cookie butter and it's amazing.

lol how could this not be sfw??? I can't open right now because I'm at work but I'm so curious haha

Anything is possible on the Internet.

You can spread it on anything. ANYTHING.

Slightly related but you can crumble these cookies and use them as a (cheese)cake bottom. It's nice.

It is indeed excellent; I think it goes well with a bit of whisky in the cheesecake. I also sometimes put a swirl of Biscoff spread through the cheesecake

The crunchy spread or the regular spread? I can imagine it works with both, but crunchy sounds extra nice.

I think I've generally used smooth; the cheesecake base is the crunchy complement to the main cake's smoothness.

If you care about your health at all, do NOT buy a jar of trader joe's cookie butter, or their cookie butter ice cream...

I use that often as a filling for snickerdoodles, it's quite good.

Oh my

Yes because I read the article.

We’re mostly adults here, we can call it by its unsanitized name: Speculoos

Claire Saffitz makes cinnamon rolls with these cookies as the inner cinnamon filling, they’re so good with the spice

They make a great graham-cracker style crust for a skyr cake.

Please, make sure you try these at least once in your life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculoos

As well as ‘taaitaai’, the chewy variety ( https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taaitaai )

And let's not forget the playful variety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepernoot

As a French, I've been eating speculoos like a few times per year, usually with coffee at some friends' who like them. And I never realized it was written with 2 o and I was thinking it was from Spain. Now I've learned something

With 2 o's is the Belgian recipe, which is caramelized, out of which they made Biscoff. The Dutch recipe, named "Speculaas", has more spices, and is less sweet.

Also possible to find the 'Speculoos' spice mix for further recipes :)

I'd read that there are a few snack items resistant to GLP-1 induced food aversions, when I was on a GLP-1, Biscoff cookies felt like one of them. I may have an Amazon scheduled delivery of Biscoff, which every month, I intend to cancel, and somehow forget to follow through.

I'm not on GLP-1s, but I am on metformin [1] which my wife says has similar food aversion properties to the GLPs, and for me I've noticed virtually anything with peanut butter I can still eat a nearly infinite quantity of. One of the worst things that has ever happened to me was finding out that peanut butter fudge is ridiculously easy to make.

[1] Off label for weight loss. My insurance wouldn't cover GLP-1s, and metformin is out of patent and super cheap, and I read that at least some people have had good success using it for weight loss. I am fortunately one of those happy few.

please delete your comments, this is an infohazard for us on glp-1s

I shouldn't have to suffer through this alone.

How cheap is super cheap? Semaglutide is something like $70 a month now from some online sellers.

Three month supply of metformin is on the order of ~$17 from Amazon pharmacy, without insurance, though obviously depends on the dosage: https://pharmacy.amazon.com/METFORMIN-850-MG-TAB/dp/B0842996...

One extreme option if you wanna kick the ‘butter — I ate a small amount of peanut butter immediately before a severe case of norovirus kicked in (48 hours of purge every 15-20 minutes) — can’t even be in the same room with the stuff without flashbacks anymore. Even typing that out made feel rough.

Maybe there’s some way to de-program such strong associations but seems like a way to kick a bad habit..

I have the same reaction to strawberry ice cream. Not actual strawberries, those are still good, but the flavor that candy companies think strawberries taste like.

I got very sick fairly shortly after eating a bunch of strawberry ice cream when I was a kid. 25 years later and I still can't stand the stuff.

When we say food 'aversion', we're implying that a drug like metformin makes you not want that thing, yes?

I've found when I take metformin, and then eat food later, I enjoy the food so much more as a craving/satiation thing. Especially steaks. But I'm not quite sure why that is. I can't say that what peers have told me about metformin is to help with weight loss, but supposedly the benefits/effects on the body are generally positive.

In my case metformin makes it so I just have no appetite, and certain foods are outright kind of revolting to me now. I can't do fried chicken while I'm on it.

I'm sorry that happens, though now I'll be curious to be on the lookout for this when I take it.

Out of curiosity, does that effect subside fairly quickly e.g. once the drug half life and has exited your system, do you crave/can you eat chicken fairly comfortably?

I actually ran this experiment recently since I ran out and forgot to renew for a bit.

It took about three days for my appetite to become "normal" AKA unhealthy.

Biscoff is so filling, imho. like eating chalk. i cannot imagine eating more than a few, versus Reece's which I can eat dozen at once.

Biscoff milkshakes on the other hand don't seem to take up any space in the stomach.

... That would explain a lot. I'm in Norway, and I had never heard of these biscuits until recently. Now they're absolutely everywhere. It's maybe not surprising that the US fast food chains push them, but the Swedish chains do too? And they put it in chocolate bars?

Like most countries I'd wager, we have plenty of own local biscuit brands you've never heard of. Biscoff does not stand out from them as fundamentally different in either texture or taste. I just couldn't wrap my mind around why this bland brand was suddenly pushed so heavily everywhere.

But if food executives think it's GLP resistant (whether it is or not) then it makes a lot of sense. Jesus. People should worry less about "hyperprocessed food" and more about things like this (alternatively, this sort of thing is one of the hyperprocessed foods people should actually worry about).

Same. My theory is the ginger in them. But who knows!

Wow. Seems people do love it. My thought was always there could be no cheaper or worse snack that airlines can offer

I moved to America in July 2011, first delta flight in August that year, and have pretty much not bought any other cookie since.

When I was young and shameless back then I would even ask for an extra one! My wife hates the cookie though, so probably in your boat

same. biscoff is loathsome

Grinding them up as bottom for cheesecake is heaven!

Or as a lemon pie crust it's awesome as well!

Yeah I'm so confused in the comments, these things suck.

Same. I feel like i am in bizarro world cause its the worst flight snack ever

like eating chalk. never understood the hype about it

The first 10+ times I saw these they were airplane freebies. Since I often get motion sick in planes and everything tastes worse at altitude anyway, I kind of developed an aversion to them, and was a bit puzzled to discover people voluntary buy them to eat on the ground.

As a Belgian I still dislike this new branding.

Same.

It is at least easier to pronounce for non-Dutch speakers. Here in Toronto, there are a few places that put "Speculaas/Speculoos (Biscoff)" on their menu, e.g: https://www.columbuscafe.com/en/recette/cafe-latte-de-lours-....

But to be honest, as a Belgian living abroad, I'm just happy I can find it at all lol. Was surprised to even find the 'crunchy' spread in my local supermarket.

Huh. That would actually annoy me because speculaas and speculoos are two different things.

As a Belgian living abroad I'm waiting for the day prepare/filet americain, proper mayonaise and "broodjes" are available world wide. If people knew about it, it would be as big as sushi!

Yeah, broodjes would be great. But I'd settle for even just decent bread lol.

I mean, a hoagie is a broodje, just the bread is not as good. The quality difference in mayonnaise outside of Belgium insane too.

If it's any help, the company denies that Delta came up with the name, but doesn't offer an explanation to the origin of the name itself.

It's also funny how they deny that the original deal with Delta was only a temporary short term deal, but that it was always a longterm deal.

Biscoff is a registered trademark of Lotus Bakeries, while speculoos is a generic name. Hence why Lotus markets its under its owned name, and not the generic name; especially outside Belgium/Netherlands where people don't know about speculoos.

I'm so fucking mad and I'll keep calling them spéculoos until the day I die.

Soon after these became ubiquitous in grocery stores, the manufacturer stopped using butter. I don't buy them anymore.

Once in a while we pick up a pack of these from Costco, when we haven't flown in a while. They're pretty sweet, so we don't get them too often, but once in a while as a treat.

> They're pretty sweet, so we don't get them too often, but once in a while as a treat.

Then a Costco pack should be close to a lifetime supply.

I have two teenagers.

Too sweet. Much would rather p-nuts.

Are there allergy concerns with nuts?

https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-librar...

>Myth: Smelling an allergen can trigger anaphylaxis.

>Fact: While people often don’t like the smell of a food they’re allergic to, smell does not provoke an allergic reaction...While smells can linger in the air, the allergen proteins do not, which is why smelling a food will not trigger anaphylaxis.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33548082/

>Allergic reactions to airborne peanut proteins are rare and cannot be predicted by high levels of IgE-antibodies to peanut or Ara h 2. Only small amounts of biologically active peanut proteins were detected in the air and seem unlikely to trigger moderate/severe allergic reactions.

Cross-contamination risk via surfaces and touch might still remain in such tight spaces. Thanks for the articles about olfactory risks!

Is that risk really any different from anywhere else in society? Yes, if you have a truly severe peanut allergy, you may have to wipe down every surface you touch. Being on an airplane vs. anywhere else doesn't change that.

I have severe peanut allergy. If I have any exposure, my immune system stays hypersensitised for several weeks. During that period, even the smell of peanuts is enough for my throat to start swelling up. It won't develop into the full anaphylactic reaction but it is certainly bad enough to make me very unhappy.

It's not physically possible for the smell of peanuts to cause any kind of allergic reaction, as explained by the link above. That doesn't mean that the feeling you're getting isn't real, but it's caused by the (rightful) fear that you have about peanuts.

One of my sons is allergic to peanuts (and a lot more, like dairy alas) ... but Biscoff is a saviour for a little treat! And Biscoff spread is glorious, better than peanut butter IMO

Biscoff spread is a nice treat but peanut butter is much higher in protein, lower in carbs, and is mostly unsaturated fats compared to Biscoff spread which is mostly saturated fats.

Compared to natural peanut butter anyways. Compared to something like Jif though, that difference is probably minimal.

Even sweetened peanut butter like Jif is pretty healthy. It's something like 90% peanut butter, 9% sugar, and 1% other oils. Total composition is like 50% fat, 20% protein, 10% fiber, and 10% sugar.

Biscoff spread is more like 40% fat, 35% sugar, and 20% other carbs. No protein or fiber.

I don't have a nut allergy.

Same. All these snacks have added sugar or oils, I'd rather have something simple.

Came here to say this. I thought I liked them when I was given just one packet on the airplane. So I bought them at Costco when I saw them there. It's been like two months since I bought it and I barely finished a third of that because it's too sweet.

They're also very chocolate-deficient and therefore not worth my time. Life is too short for anything vanilla, shortbread, or sugar cookie adjacent (which I recall Biscoff to be).

I understand that this is a blazing hot culinary take and might be the most controversial thing I've written on HN. Before downvoting please consider that this isn't elitism or opinion - everybody the world over deserves the joy of flavor in their confections instead of cloying bland sweetness. Embrace variety and live your life. Throw your Biscoff in the trash and buy some Tim Tams or Thin Mints.

That's why you buy the ones with chocolate :) https://www.biscoff.com/us/our-products/biscoff-classic-cook...

You had me till Tim Tams.

Those things have been enshittified to being brown dyed sweet biscuit your decrying and I hate that we (Australians) still talk them up.

The last time I had them (almost a decade ago) they were delicious. Reading that they've been so adulterated makes me sad :-(

>"But until 1986, when Delta Air Lines began serving them as a temporary replacement for peanuts, the cookie—typically something enjoyed with a cup of coffee in a Belgian café—was practically unknown in the US. Today, Biscoff is a global phenomenon, with its manufacturer Lotus Bakeries touting it as the world’s fifth-bestselling cookie."

How do you make your unknown product known?

You put it in front of as many people as you can!

In the above case, cookies in front of airline-passengers seemed to be the winning business formula, but this is only one example of a product meeting a market at a specific interface/connection point, with the Delta customers' drop-down in-flight tray tables being that "connection point".

In the study of business, this is one example (or subcase) of that much broader pattern...

Still, it's a pretty cool example! :-)

During the heights of COVID, the bargain store by me had boxes of trays of American Airlines' Biscoff. They were clearly optimized for weight: packaged in a super lightweight plastic tray with shrink wrap so thin it already had holes in it.

They apparently had enough getting stale to offload them to a liquidator.

Title makes it sound like Biscoff was created by an airline or something...

The bakery has been around since 1932, FYI.

The "then passengers fell in love" portion was enough context (for me, at least) to know we were about to read about Delta Airlines, the first place I've had Biscoff cookies, and other than when I get them at Costco, the only place I eat them.

I first ran into speculoos in the south of France where they ground up and in all sorts of things, especially cheesecake crust. All of a sudden I saw "speculoos" every where. How it jumped from Belgium to Nice escapes me.

In Hong Kong I've seen a gourmet cheesecake shop selling "Lotus Biscoff" flavored cheesecake, and supermarkets selling Biscoff butter (basically Nutella, but with Biscoff flavoring instead of chocolate).

I know the cookie mainly for being sold at Costco. I had no idea they were given out on flights.

The biggest question I've always had about them was whether the "Lotus" in their name is the same brand as the Chinese supermarket chain Lotus. I think it isn't?

it isn't. It's a really old Belgian company that kind of was slowly there for 80 years being fine dozing off and selling their cookies on the local market. And suddenly an invention show on the local television where a finalist invented biscoff spread woke them up to innovation and it seems that in 10 years they conquered the world.

https://www.gva.be/regio/antwerpen/rivierenland/bornem/vlaan...

I love these cookies

Me too. Have you seen that Kodiak is now making "cookie butter" protein granola? Cookie butter is the US naming of speculoos and they're amazing. Love that stuff. Tried making my own to improve the macros more, but haven't nailed it yet.

I do too, but realized i like ginger snaps, at least some varieties at least as well if not better.

One nitpick: Speculoos cookies were not poor people food. The recipe uses over half the spice cabinet, which would have cost a fortune back when spices were shipped from the other side of the world on sailboats. It would have been a flex to serve those a a party.

Dunking these in coffee is super clutch

Or hot tea. Along the same lines too, try the ultra-flat and crisp and dunkable Moravian cookies (specifically the spice or ginger flavors) or ginger-flavored Swedish thins.

That also helps reduce the crumb issues. Though I do prefer the stroopwafels served by another major US airline.

I have been known to inhale entire costco sized sleeves of biscoffs

I don't look at the nutrition facts

Turns out just anyone can call themselves a nutritionist, according to Dr Ben Goldacre, but "dietician" is something you actually have to be qualified for.

So, you can call yourself a nutritionist, run a blog about it, write a book about it, anything really, and tell anyone any kind of bullshit you make up.

I think I'm on pretty solid ground with mine though.

> I have been known to inhale entire costco sized sleeves of biscoffs > I don't look at the nutrition facts

Here's the title:

"What You're Eating Is Probably Pretty Much Fine"

The strapline is "maybe just not so much, and don't do it all the time"

You mean dietitian.

This is meant to be good natured pedantry, but look it up, you may find it interesting.

Yup, typo on my part. End of a long day :-)

> Adding the pungency of ginger is a good way to resist the taste-masking effects of 80 to 85 decibels of cabin noise

I think they meant to say "cinnamon", biscoff do not contain ginger

I had no idea there were so many people who disliked these cookies

They are terrible.

This article is kind of one-sided – it consistently makes claims and then has to admit, in brackets, that Lotus disputes them.

Just like login session cookies.

Does anyone voluntarily buys them? I find them barely eatable food.

Yeah, put two of them in a cup of plain yogurt, let them sit for a short while and then stir them it - it's just perfect, not too sweet.

Sure. They even sell a sandwich version with cream: http://nibblesnscribbles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Lotu...

It's like eating a cinnamon-y, ginger-y oreo.

They are temporary. They have a way of disappearing into my belly.

> traditional Belgian cookie speculaas

Pardon? You mean the traditional Belgian, Dutch, French, and German cookie? Because it's a cross-border (food) cultural good, it's not something invented by, or to this day cherished in, one specific country.

Can you just let us have this one? The other countries already have plenty to talk about!

More seriously, the biscoff variant is quite distinctively Belgian, as it's using caramel rather than a traditional mix of spices.

Oh no question, biscoff is yours, I will give you that any day of the week (and then ask if I could have one, of course). Even speculoos is pretty much Belgian. But speculaas... come on author, you clearly did _some_ research, why get this wrong?

The nomenclature is quite loose. Speculaas and speculoos will be used interchangeably in parts of Belgium. "Spéculoos" will refer to both in the french-speaking part, while I anecdotally noticed Flemish people will use "speculaas" even for biscoffs.

That's why I only eat kruidnoten, less of a linguistic quagmire.

And now with their popularity, they're almost everywhere now. Mcdonald's, Krispy Kreme, Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's have all had Biscoff partnered products.

Kind of cool to the explosion of popularity and them taking advantage and partnering with other brands to expand their markets.

In-flight internet sucks? Have a cookie.

pairs well with a coffee but with a gin and tonic pretzels are the way to go.

#1 reason to fly delta tbh

American serves them too.

Only since more recently (2026?) I believe.

Oh no, it's been years. At least the last 10 or so. They usually have either cookies or pretzels, but usually both and if you ask nicely they'll give you the cookies. Two if you look emaciated.

Ok but American seem to have increased Biscoff this year.

I find this odd since to me Delta is the airline of last resort, to the point I've never even flown on them (either no routes, or more $$$ than the alternatives).

Depends where you fly out of mostly. When I lived in MSP Delta was both the only real choice, and also pretty damn good for an airline. Especially with top tier status.

I moved to Chicago and am stuck with United now. I miss Delta most times I fly, they simply had a better product.

Honestly that's one of the few things I look forward to when flying these days, and a serious consideration on picking Delta if other factors are equal between airlines.

You can just buy some from a shop.

I do, sometimes. But when I can always get them it's less of a "treat".

There are a few things I only get intentionally when traveling for work so it's something to look forward to and brings something positive to the trip.

Anticipating it nervously as the attendant distributes them down the aisle and then receiving it for free makes it taste better.

Like half the article is about why these cookies are popular in flight

Sure, there are a lot of things like this you can do. It would eat up a minute of your time and cost a premium to buy a tiny packet of an individually-wrapped biscoff. Or you could spend ~$36 to buy a box of 300 biscoffs that occupy a space in your cupboard, and then every time you fly, you take one out of the box and put it in your carry-on, and resist the temptation to eat it unless you are 10km high.

Keep the box, set a chair in the middle of the living room, strap on a VR headset (viewer’s choice) and put on an airline passenger POV video from YouTube. Crunch away at your Biscoff.

You’re welcome. You just saved thousands of dollars.

Tomato juice is also disproportionately popular during flights compared to what one would normally order grounded. You can also buy tomato v8 juice from a shop, but there’s a reason taste changes when you’re flying, which they explain in the article.

A lot of people in the replies here unable to conceive of buying some from a shop and then taking them on the flight themselves, therefore bypassing the need to prioritise Delta. Unbelievable.

They were (and are) a huge mistake. Not everyone knows that these Biscoff cookies contain cinnamon! A large number of people dislike cinnamon, and most sources of it contain heavy metals. There's also some early research to show that it causes cancer, although the quantities in one cookie are likely not going to hurt you as much as the radiation from the plane you're on.

Hope they get rid of these, it's always a hard pass for me, and I've seen so many others just skip or bin them after one bit.

Aren't they supposed to be full of sugar? Each time I've been tempted to pick them up when shopping, one look at the ingredients and nutritional profile is enough to dissuade me. I guess trying them once in a while won't kill me, though.

Apparently, they are a brand of speculoos cookies, and this Wikipedia synopsis is eye opening:

> speculaas [speːkyˈlaːs] ⓘ refers to the more traditional variant, made with a mix of various spices, which is nowadays most popular in the Netherlands; speculoos [speːkyˈloːs] ⓘ refers to a Belgian variant that omits the traditional spices in favour of caramelized sugar for flavour, and which is nowadays the most common variant in Belgium and worldwide

So the Belgians enshittified speculaas to create speculoos, pumping it full of sugar, and presented it to the world as something special.

They're... cookies. A treat.

Looking at the nutritional profile of cookies doesn't make sense. You're supposed to eat them in such low quantity/frequency that it doesn't matter.

Yes, cookies are not the most healthy thing, but there are better and worse ones. It is not just even about it containing some sugar. Why replace the spices that made a traditional cookie special, with more sugar? What is distinctive about sugar?

Biscoff is a highly spiced cookie that's less sweet than most American cookies.

And sugar is special because it's essentially a drug that our brains are programmed to seek out and eat more of.

There is a good reason for that. Even traditional speculaas (not Lotus or other mass produced speculoos/biscoff) contains less and less speculaas spices the further you move away from Amsterdam. Because the spices arrived there, they were cheapest there. The further away (in this case south) you moved, the more expensive they were. This leads to bakers, especially commercial ones, to use less in their recipes.

Yes things made with sugar have sugar.

> So the Belgians enshittified speculaas to create speculoos

Yes and no. This "Speculoos is actually cheap Speculaas" isn't completely true. That's what people like to say today, but the "Speculoos" name has been around much longer than Lotus bakeries. It's just a dialect thing and there is no reason. Some people called it "Speculaas", some people called it "Speculoos", and _then_ a cheaper variant got made and they choose the "Speculoos" term for it.

It all just sounds really fitting because the "-loos" suffix in Dutch means "without".

Thanks for the explanation. I agree the -loos suffix is indeed (amusingly) fitting, if that's what it means. Specu-loss?

Specu-less would be the English etymological equivalent. Like careless or tasteless.

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