> Or, maybe, don’t: when people do, they take much more than they eat. Compared with ordering from the menu, all-you-can-eat breakfasts waste more food—up to twice as much, according to one study.
Is that a cultural thing? We have pretty much zero food waste on any buffet as you can easily only take what you actually want to eat. It's just basic good education to be considerate with resources, especially food resources - and I rarely see people taking more than they actually eat, so it's not just an "our family" thing. If you do throw away a lot of foot on a buffet you're just an inconsiderate asshole - and if a restaurant location has significant food waste from that they should just start charging for leftovers.
baal80spam 47 minutes ago [-]
> BREAKFAST IS THE most important meal of the day
First sentence of the article and already an error.
martingoodson 3 minutes ago [-]
"Conclusions: This meta-analysis confirmed that skipping breakfast is associated with overweight/obesity, and skipping breakfast increases the risk of overweight/obesity. The results of cohort studies and cross-sectional studies are consistent. There is no significant difference in these results among different ages, gender, regions, and economic conditions."
There is some evidence that moving your meals to early in the day is good for you. Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
Horses for courses though. I know plenty of people who don't eat breakfast but personally I found it much easier to not eat dinner.
jahnu 41 minutes ago [-]
OK fine but it's not really helpful to us reading your comment if you also don't back up your counter claim.
m12k 17 minutes ago [-]
Not my comment but my guess is they might be referring to the research that shows that intermittent fasting has various health benefits. And one of the most popular ways to do intermittent fasting is 16:8 (16 hours where you fast, 8 hours where you eat), typically where you only ever eat from 12 noon until 8 in the evening, and then fast from 8 pm until noon the next day. Under those conditions, breaking the fast with a breakfast means losing out on the health benefits, and you're better off waiting until lunch.
Cthulhu_ 8 minutes ago [-]
But there's other research that, at least when it comes to weight loss, there is no measurable difference between intermittent fasting and reduced calorie intake.
Angostura 4 minutes ago [-]
I think the main point of intermittent fasting is to help with diabetes prevention
Jtarii 32 minutes ago [-]
That which can be asserted with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence.
danlitt 15 minutes ago [-]
but at some point someone should bring some evidence, or the exchange is pointless.
pasquinelli 3 minutes ago [-]
not when the entire conversation has nothing to do with anything.
kwertyoowiyop 3 minutes ago [-]
Welcome to Hacker News?
Angostura 4 minutes ago [-]
No it can’t.
ZiiS 31 minutes ago [-]
It is important to chalange the spread of misinformation even when you don't have time to prove the correct information. If that statement was left unchallenged it would be seen as a tacit endorsment. The amount of effort you have to invest is proving that breakfast dosn't ward off tigers is disproportionate to the benefit.
cultofmetatron 41 minutes ago [-]
seriosuly underrated comment. I finished a 20 min bike ride and feel clear headed. Havent' consumed anything other than black coffee. Most people are so used to eating continuously and never train their bodies to be metabolically flexible. Doesn't help that the "most important meal of the day" shtick was invented by cereal companies trying to sell us crap dessert masquerading as health food.
Tade0 27 minutes ago [-]
Same routine here. I can ride on that until lunch and I learned this during my (few) years in Italy, because it's normal there.
Also there was a brief moment in my adult life when I had sleep for supper and it was the first time in years when I heard my stomach actually rumbling - I was so used to eating at the first sign of cravings that I forgot how it feels.
high_na_euv 22 minutes ago [-]
Counterpoint:
Ive almost never been eating breakfasts and when I went on delivery diet and started eating them then ive been feeling better tbh
saaaaaam 21 minutes ago [-]
What is delivery diet?
TeMPOraL 16 minutes ago [-]
I'm guessing those Meals in Boxes as a Service you can subscribe to, where they drop a bunch of calorically deficient, bland, starvation-level meal packs at your doorstep in the middle of the night, and you're supposed to survive on them for the next 24 hours.
Toast, eggs, sausages, tomato, mushrooms and most of the other things are dirt cheap. Bacons a bit more expensive but I doubt that ever has any left over.
citrin_ru 9 minutes ago [-]
May be still cheap in the US but in the UK all this almost 2x more expensive than before COVID while salaries nowhere near 2x higher. It's a small fraction of cost of saying in a hotel but not a negligible one.
ssl-3 18 minutes ago [-]
This article is dogshit.
The implied problem: People waste too much food at hotel breakfast buffets.
The work: Some people made a model (that itself is devoid of hotels, food, and people altogether, as well lacking validation) that let them wiggle some parameters and see if waste changed in that simulation.
The proposed solution: There isn't one. It's just dogshit.
We can learn roughly as much about how consumption and waste and profitability work in the real world by playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.
opan 11 minutes ago [-]
I was reading this thinking "wait, did anyone actually eat food? Is any of this real?", but sounds like we took away something similar. I don't get it. I was thinking even if the buffet were virtual, maybe they could give real people real plates, and a menu, and they'd load up from the virtual buffet, which would actually be people cooking for each order or similar. No signs that they did that, though.
sam_lowry_ 32 minutes ago [-]
Staying in hotels is wasteful, to start with. Buen Camino.
ggm 46 minutes ago [-]
Nudge theory. Applied to my favourite meal of the day. Gaaah. I think I'll simply fill two plates now. Or maybe 3.
fnordian_slip 37 minutes ago [-]
I've long disliked all the "nudge" hype that was prevalent 10 years ago, but what really sent me over the edge was the "if books could kill" podcast episode about it [0]
It's incredible how this stuff even made its way into the Obama administration.
If hotels do a virtual buffet and other nonsense I'll just opt out and grab some bits from a local supermarket, which I imagine is what they really would like - to eliminate breakfast entirely.
Just like making room service opt in - they can claim it's available but obviously a lot of people just don't bother because they pick up on the signal from the hotel that they don't want to do it
Personally I've never seen wasteful people at breakfast buffets in the UK. Greedy yes but not plates of unfinished food.
It's also good to remember how much breakfast regularly costs now. £15-20 is quite common at mid range places - £10 of yesteryear is exceedingly rare
aleph_minus_one 29 minutes ago [-]
>
It's also good to remember how much breakfast regularly costs now. £15-20 is quite common at mid range places - £10 of yesteryear is exceedingly rare
There exist hotels where breakfast is still very cheap (but the rooms are accordingly more expensive). The reason is that business travelers, the budgets for meals are really tight (you have to pay anything above by yourself), but the maximum allowed costs for hotel rooms are typically much less tight.
To accommodate such business travelers (though these are not the only guests), the hotel makes the breakfast really cheap, but the room accordingly more expensive (but still within the typical budget of business travelers), so that such customers can deduct more travel expenses to the employer.
Here's an idea: provide better food. That way people won't want to leave it on the plate.
gib444 20 minutes ago [-]
Right! The only time I leave food is when it's inedible (or the scrambled eggs fooled me again, looking fresh when they're powdered. It's not 1945 so I tend not to eat powdered foods)
Which is unfortunately more common
Rendered at 09:09:52 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Is that a cultural thing? We have pretty much zero food waste on any buffet as you can easily only take what you actually want to eat. It's just basic good education to be considerate with resources, especially food resources - and I rarely see people taking more than they actually eat, so it's not just an "our family" thing. If you do throw away a lot of foot on a buffet you're just an inconsiderate asshole - and if a restaurant location has significant food waste from that they should just start charging for leftovers.
First sentence of the article and already an error.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31918985/
Horses for courses though. I know plenty of people who don't eat breakfast but personally I found it much easier to not eat dinner.
Also there was a brief moment in my adult life when I had sleep for supper and it was the first time in years when I heard my stomach actually rumbling - I was so used to eating at the first sign of cravings that I forgot how it feels.
Ive almost never been eating breakfasts and when I went on delivery diet and started eating them then ive been feeling better tbh
The implied problem: People waste too much food at hotel breakfast buffets.
The work: Some people made a model (that itself is devoid of hotels, food, and people altogether, as well lacking validation) that let them wiggle some parameters and see if waste changed in that simulation.
The proposed solution: There isn't one. It's just dogshit.
We can learn roughly as much about how consumption and waste and profitability work in the real world by playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.
It's incredible how this stuff even made its way into the Obama administration.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjArvN9cfgE, or on Spotify or Apple podcasts
Just like making room service opt in - they can claim it's available but obviously a lot of people just don't bother because they pick up on the signal from the hotel that they don't want to do it
Personally I've never seen wasteful people at breakfast buffets in the UK. Greedy yes but not plates of unfinished food.
It's also good to remember how much breakfast regularly costs now. £15-20 is quite common at mid range places - £10 of yesteryear is exceedingly rare
There exist hotels where breakfast is still very cheap (but the rooms are accordingly more expensive). The reason is that business travelers, the budgets for meals are really tight (you have to pay anything above by yourself), but the maximum allowed costs for hotel rooms are typically much less tight.
To accommodate such business travelers (though these are not the only guests), the hotel makes the breakfast really cheap, but the room accordingly more expensive (but still within the typical budget of business travelers), so that such customers can deduct more travel expenses to the employer.
Which is unfortunately more common