The apple is different from cheese or salumi, becauase it's fresh produce--most countries have stricter rules about that because of agricultural protections (i.e., not bringing in pests that could ruin a crop). In my experience, it tends to be particularly strict with island countries. The most thorough check--and fruit confiscation--I've had was into New Zealand. (Super cute fruit-and-veg-sniffing beagle!)

This isn't a flight story, but it is a food travel story - sort of, at least! Last summer, my partner and I took the bus to New York City from Toronto. At the border, our bag was going through the x-ray machine (I'd had no idea that was routine for land travel), and something raised an alert. The border officials opened it up and started looking through, asking us, "Do you have any agricultural products?" We scratched our heads but couldn't think of anything - we know better than to try to bring produce across the border. "Are you sure?" they kept asking. "Apples? Oranges?" Each time, the answer was no. Finally, one of them said, "do you have soap in here?" and this time we had to say yes, in fact, we had packed soap. "Oh. I guess it looked sort of like an orange."

We traveled around Texas for a week, including some camping, and bought a small jar of peanut butter for breakfasts. We'd barely dented it, so it was in our carry-ons (we ate some of it for lunch before getting to the airport).

It was accused of being a gel (it's not, it's an emulsification, natural ones are more of a suspension).
I asked if I had made sandwiches out of the same peanut butter, if it would be acceptable, and was told that, yes, it would. Too bad I was out of bread.

A few years ago I visited NYC and promptly hit the Union Square Greenmarket as I love to do and what did I see looking at me but Flying Pigs Leaf Lard that I had read so much about. I was traveling light and had about 4 pints packed in my carry on along with some great cheese (I was so naive!). I was stopped at security at JFK and asked what I had in my bag. I answered cheese, which by then I suspected and pulled it out, not very thrilled about surrendering it. Then she asked, anything else? Then I sputtered out 'lard.' Would she believe me??? She returned with, 'Honey, you can not take LARD in a flight.' It was a bit hilarious, because, who travels with pints of LARD? I was NOT going to surrender my beloved leaf lard. I ran to the counter to check my bag and safely got my precious cargo home.

In France they sell condensed milk in long tubes (like toothpaste tubes). It is much sweeter and all around better than the condensed milk we have here (Nestle brand), and I've never seen it in the states. My mom is obsessed with it (puts it in her coffee) so when I was living there, I brought some to take back to her. I had already checked my luggage and had forgotten that the tube of it was in my carry on. The first security guard to find it was a nice French woman, I pleaded to her and explained it was for my mother. "It's for your mother?" she asked, and then smiled and let me go through with it. But I changed planes in Germany and had to go through security a second time. I had buried it deep in my bag hoping they just wouldn't find it. Watching them slowly unpack most (but not all!) of the things in that bag was a painstaking process, but they luckily stopped right before they got to the tube of milk and I successfully made it through. Felt like such an accomplishment by the time I handed it to my mom back in NY.

Last April my husband had to travel for work during Passover. Because it wasn't going to be easy for him to find Kosher for Passover food where he was going, I helped him pack enough food to last him for the 2 day trip. This included a tub of cream cheese to spread on matzo for breakfasts. Well apparently cream cheese is considered by the TSA to be a liquid or gel, and they seized it from him. Poor guy was stuck eating plain matzo for breakfast!

On my way back from Norway we were reentering the U.S. with suitcases filled with chocolate and candies, which was allowed, and I looked over and saw a man surrounded by officers unpacking a suitcase FULL of cured meats. Like literally he was pulling dozens of sausages and other meats from his carry-on. It was very strange. He also had some agricultural products like fruit and veg, so of course they confiscated that. I didn't find out if they took the meat though, as we were already through and had to move on to catch our flight home.

I can't complain about confiscating raw agricultural products because if you don't you can introduce invasive species or new diseases to the U.S. Cured meats, cheeses, and lard though? That I'll never understand.

On our way back from home, I do bring tea, coffee(ground) and snacks, and tick yes for food in immigration forms and when asked say tea n fried snacks... I make sure my mom n aunt dont stuff something when I am not looking( I have them believe that I will go to jail or be deported :)). But I do know a few instances where people have been caught with flowers n fruits. Is better to be true n declare, rather than getting stuck n embarrased. But I do wonder how people get some restricted stuff in.
As for food on plane, Indian food is too smelly, so sandwiches n nutribars it is.

I was behind a woman in security who brought a jar of peanut butter, jam and a loaf of bread. Security promptly confiscated the pb&j. The suggestion was that she make the sandwiches, and all would be fine. So apparently when peanut butter or jam is in a jar, it's a liquid or gel, but once it's on bread, it somehow magically changes it's physical properties to become a solid! What an amazing substance!

It seems like the security in domestic areas of the airport are way more strict about what can and cannot go through. I've had mixed reactions to peanut butter, and they're way more picky about different foods. But I've brought stuff onto international flights several times without anyone saying anything--even applesauce! My parents and I always bring back PLENTY of food from India though, in our checked bags, and no one ever says anything. No fruit, of course, but pretty much anything else. I know that Australia is MUCH more strict about what can go in and out of the country.

Interesting about the peanut butter. One of my friends went on an international trip and came back with some *ahem* illegal substances hidden inside a jar of peanut butter. Makes me wonder how he was able to get that through security.

Back in college I was flying home from a visit with my parents carrying 2 dozen live oysters for my pet sitter. They earned me a thorough interrogation but I got to take them on the plane. In Seattle, my connecting flight was cancelled and the airline put us up in a hotel overnight but I wasn't sure the hotel would have refrigerators. I explained my problem to the ticket agents and they were nice enough to store the oysters in their employee fridge until the next morning. Horizon Air is the best!

Last year, my carry-on was tagged because the sea salt and raw sugar that I had packed looked a lot like a liquid on the x-ray scan. The British security person was totally nice about it and explained what happened. She even advised me to take them out of the bag and leave them in the trays so that I wouldn't have to (again) empty my carry-on when I got to NY. If only more screeners were like her...

Moral of the story: granulated food looks like a liquid, so don't bury them in your carry-on.

I often bring some fresh fruit (usually clementines or apples) as part of my carry on snack so I can have something decent to eat on the plane. So far I've been able to get through without a problem. Heck, half the time I forget to take the quart-sized bag of liquids out of my carry on and rarely do they catch that. I guess I don't travel the super vigilant TSA routes. It's mostly US domestic travel.

Three mini-stories:

1. The ag checkpoint coming back from Maui where they have to approve the pineapples you're bringing back made me giggle. I think it's because they take their jobs so seriously!

2. In the mid-2000s, I traveled with a carry-on backpack filled to the brim with summer squash. I worked at a farmer's market at the time, and I didn't want it to go to waste in my refrigerator while I was on vacation, but I was terrified they were going to take it away.

3. A few years ago I had a jar of bee pollen in a gift bag I was bringing to a family gift exchange. I was worried about it just because it looks suspicious. They ran that bag through the machine two or three times, then it came out of the machine and they kind of set it aside (but still on the belt), and walked away. I cautiously picked it up, looked around at them (they weren't looking at me), and I walked away with it as fast as I could.

My boyfriend had a bag of unopened beef jerky taken when we arrived in Australia, which was a little sad. But the weirdest was how lax it was after arriving in Puerto Rico after a cruise - they just waved us through because they were getting so backed up. This is after we were very cautious about abiding to the alcohol limit, and not bringing back more cheap liquor because we thought we wouldn't be able to bring it in! Argh! Kinda weird though, because the flight from PR into the US was treated as a domestic US flight, so we didn't have any real customs check...

I had to surrender my son's veggie & fruit purees. Nasty, processed stuff in a jar? Sure, you can take that with you... homemade food for my child? Nope. Even though I'd done it before... it honestly depends on how little a particular agent pays attention to or cares about the written rules. You're supposed to be able to take food/drink/formula/breastmilk for kids on board, but I didn't have time to argue and our flight was getting close to boarding time. Thank goodness it was a fairly short flight.

I have a friend that flew from London to Atlanta. When he and his wife went through Customs their bags were x-rayed which led to a thorough interrogation of whether they had fruit in their bag. They repeatedly said no. It turns out the screener saw a very tiny "pear" on the x-ray image. It was a small marzipan candy shaped like a pear. :P They got through just fine.

I watched a Japanese woman at the Beijing airport try to convince the security guy that her bundle of pu'er cha, a big solid cake of fermented tea, was not an explosive device. Except she was speaking Japanese and he was speaking Chinese, so it was all very confusing. (Don't know why the guy didn't recognize the tea. Tea like that was all over. She probably bought it at the airport.)

i've never traveled internationally, but i notice that a lot of you seasoned fliers prefer to bring your own snacks & foods on board - something i will have to remember if i ever leave the US!

This not food related, but its coffee related, so I am going to share it. Flying out of DC after christmas, I refused to check bags and pay the 60 dollar fee. So I had a random assortment of small items from my stocking to fit into my carry on, including a travel mug and a dog toy shaped vaguely like a ball. They war stuffed in all corners of my bag.

The agent grabbed my bag and asked if I had a snow globe, and I was truly puzzled. Nope, definitely no snow globe. He asked again, are you sure you don't have a snow globe? Yes, 100% sure. When he finally found my clear plastic travel mug and the dog toy inside, he was like, oh this must be it. He ran the pair through the x ray machine and i finally got to leave security. All was good, except when the TSA agent pulled my bag off the belt he muttered, 'amateurs'. This pissed me off because not only was there nothing in my bag that ultimately needed to be removed, but I am a very savvy traveller and have never had anything confiscated, except the water from a water bottle I had packed (intending to fill it after getting through security... silly husband filling the bottle!)

I was living abroad for a year and I took a train trip to paris and then flew from paris to nice. In paris i bought some fancy honey/mustard/ect in small jars so I could carry them on the plane, and i purchased some presidents butter. the airport security confiscated my butter, since it was a gel. sooo not happy.

The Philadelphia TSA once took away my two jars of Pennsylvania Dutch apple butter, which is impossible to get here in Texas. Luckily, my mom sent a care package with more, but at $5 per jar, I was pretty annoyed.

I was coming back from Jamaica and saw a guy bringing back preserved salt cod and frozen ackee (fruit). I don't know how, but he managed to get everything through customs in the U.S. However, a Jamaican lady was trying to bring a case of mangoes and that didn't make it. The funny thing is that she was arguing with the customs officer!

I brought nearly 100 euros worth of cheese back from Paris - generally the hard pasteurized cheeses are ok, but not the soft, raw ones. I had both, vacuum-sealed by the cheesemonger and buried in my suitcase. As I was waiting for my bag at JFK, the sniffer dog came by and alerted the agent to my carry on. He kept asking if I had fruit or vegetables, which I didn't, but the dog wasn't convinced - as the dog was sniffing, I saw my cheese-laden suitcase come down the belt. I totally ignored it and let it pass by without claiming it. The agent was satisfied the dog was only smelling some fruit-flavored macarons in my carry on and moved on, after which I grabbed my suitcase and ran! SO CLOSE.

I brought a 10 pound box of blueberries on (domestic) a flight home from Maine. The funny thing was that the TSA agents knew exactly what it was when it went through the xray

When my son-in-law was deploying with a group to the mid-east desert, he was relieved of ALL his personal care items. His peanut butter, however, made it through without so much as a glance. Go figure. None of the others in the group were submitted to such scrutiny. Thankfully, the military looks after its own & shared til we could ship sil a care package.

I picked up a whole birthday cake from my favorite LA bakery, and of course I live in NJ and was planning on flying it home. Before I ordered it, though, I called both the TSA and the airline to make sure I'd be able to bring it through security and store on the plane. Long story short - I was good to go, and if I wasn't, I'd eat it all myself! I slipped the box in a duffel bag and carried it with me til I got on the plane (without any trouble from the TSA, even though the cake was slathered in frosting), and then I slipped it under the seat in front of me. 1 day and 3000 miles later, I served it at my party and it didn't even look like it had been purchased in a different time zone!