Sshould you be penalized for having eyes bigger than your stomach? A Cornish pub is trying it out: Mark Graham, the owner of the Star Inn, is now charging £2.40 per person for buffet “excess leftovers”. “A couple of spuds, of course, is no problem,” Graham told a customer who complained but said buffet behavior was out of control, referring to a plate “stacked so high you could climb a ladder and could put a flag on top of it”.
I can believe it. I lose my mind when faced with a buffet, although I usually clean my plate (I seriously regret my choices in the hours that follow). Are we our best selves when we take tongs in the glow of the heating lamps? It depends on which side of the chaff you stand on. Our hunter-gatherer instincts are capable of making any food and drink professionally tremble; name it Homo Harvester.
But we waste terrible amounts: an estimated 17% of global food production. From 2010-16, there was estimated food waste 8% to 10% contributed of man-made greenhouse gas emissions and I doubt we are doing any better now.
Fortunately, science is on our side. Researchers at the University of Queensland this year explore what drives us to create an unscalable Jenga castle of sausage rolls, decorated with shrimp gargoyles and surrounded by a flagpole. We may be driven by a “scarcity heuristic” (fear of missing out if there isn’t much left) or a “diversification heuristic” (taking things we don’t particularly like, “for the sake of of variety”). Too many options can cause cognitive overload, leading us to take a little bit of everything.
Can we be tamed? Other research suggested that penalizing buffet waste is “ineffective”; people respond better to smaller plates and rewards for eating. I doubt any of this will be enough to appease my rampant buffet appetite; nothing short of a shock collar activated on my 10th trip to the desserts would do that.
