Food Theory: How to BEAT the Buffet (Food Theory's Lost Episode)

food theory's one year youtube aversary is fast approaching but here's a little secret friends steph and i actually shot the first food theory episode two years ago see back in the summer of 2019 we made an episode about all-you-can-eat buffets just to see if this whole wacky food theory thing had legs yes that is me on a green screen sport in my pre-st jude live stream haircut our worry at the time was that it would be tough to make food theory episodes visually interesting game theory gets to show a bunch of game footage and characters film theory gets to show a bunch of tv and movie clips but food who just kind of sits there you know like i guess you could do an italian theme to like a spaghetti or pizza episode but really not a whole lot to go off of but i do think it's safe to say that at this point our fantastic editors found a way to make it work in the traditional theorist style so green screen matpat went the way of the dinosaur pretty much immediately though legend has it that if you say his name three times into a mirror at three am green screen matpat will appear to you i am gonna make you regret those words so anyway we made this episode back in 2019 then a year later in 2020 we launched this channel in the middle of a global pandemic and since nobody was going to restaurants at the time we decided maybe it wasn't the best idea to lead off with a buffet episode like we had planned but now that buffets are open and back up from c to shining c we're taking this opportunity to release the lost episode of food theory what was supposed to be one of the first food theory episodes ever so please enjoy this test pilot episode of food theory and admire just how far development of an idea can come because boy howdy this episode is a lot different from what the show eventually launched as and as an added bonus i'm also packaging in the rough semi-incomplete first draft of the food theory intro see if you can spot all one trillion things that we changed before we landed on the final polished version [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory the show that stuffs you so full of knowledge you'll wish you were wearing sweatpants and since this is youtube studies show that there's actually a 41 chance that you are wearing yourself a pair of these so you are in good company my friends today's topic is one that i take very seriously and that affects literally every single one of you out there watching right now now i'm not talking about serious stuff like gmos or superfoods that promise to make you live forever no the secrets that i'm sharing today will serve you much better than that in fact i hold the keys to the kingdom of the all-you-can-eat buffet when i tell people that i love vegas they ask if it's because of all the cool casinos or the drink glasses that are literally the height of a six-year-old i tell them no i love vegas because it's the mecca of the all-you-can-eat meal and after putting some serious study time across a lot of different buffets i can tell you the single definitive scientific strategy for getting the absolute most out of any all-you-can-eat buffet you visit be it golden corral to my personal childhood favorite ponderosa rest in peace there's only like three of you that exist so today consider this video your definitive guide to beating the house if beating the house is you eating a lot at an all you can eat restaurant do you want that fried chicken or you want the mashed potatoes do you want the spaghetti on meatballs or the mac and cheese the cake or the pie today the answer is e all of the above today we're exploring the very clear strategies to getting the most bang for your buck out of these sorts of restaurants but also exploring some of the devious ways that the buffets themselves are trying to stop you from doing exactly that today it is us versus them versus us honestly because let's face it if you're stuffing everything you possibly can into your gut every time you're going to one of these restaurants you're punishing your own body just as much as you're punishing the restaurant in fact the restaurant doesn't feel it at all but you're gonna feel it a whole heck of a lot but that doesn't mean we don't still need to know those answers for science for our wallets and for our own damn pride now to begin we need to get back to basics how businesses work and how in a world of all you can eat buffets they make any sort of money because in theory they're literally offering you the option of like 25 different entrees well the basic premise of a buffet or really any restaurant quite honestly is that the food you eat has to cost less at the end of the day than the money you spent to get that meal it's pretty basic economics right but a lot of buffets offer stuff that seem pretty darn pricey like steaks and seafood crab legs so they also have to make sure that when you're getting full you're not necessarily getting full on those items so how can the buffets manipulate your stomach well primarily they do that by manipulating your mind loosen up those belts by a few notches ladies and gentlemen let's start by taking a look at the basic layout of your standard buffet bring up that highly scientific buffet infographic it's a thing of beauty ladies and gentlemen here's your typical buffet layout where we'll be able to see in a second that there are a few different things going on here the basics are that at the far ends of the buffet typically where you'd start and end your meal you're immediately confronted with a bunch of carbohydrates starches here actually let's roll some footage of us taking a little visit to the local buffet establishment and you can actually see how consistently this plays out on one extreme of that buffet you get pastas you get macaroni you get corn and on the other extreme end we're presented with a loaf of bread a bunch of muffins a bit of toast so these are our capstone carbohydrates which are put there intentionally for two specific reasons one they're cheap they are the cheapest things to make on the menu bread and pasta can be made in massive quantities they keep well for long periods of time and it doesn't matter if the restaurant has to throw some of it away at the end of the day it is not a big loss for them other things to look out for at the ends of the buffets are going to be the things like rice dishes which you'll also see providing a buffer around some of the more expensive meat dishes like for example right here where this beef stir fry is sandwiched between cheaper pot stickers on the left and fried rice on the right to put the cost difference of starches versus other stuff into perspective rice 38 cents per pound corn 43 cents per pound potatoes 51 cents per pound all pretty darn inexpensive even if you somehow managed to eat five pounds of this stuff during your all-you-can-eat trip that buffet is still gonna make a great profit margin off of your dollars by comparison though the lowest price of wholesale beef two dollars and 80 cents per pound in 2019 so if you're eating pounds of steak you're starting to cost the restaurant a whole heck of a lot more and as an added bonus carbs tend to take up a lot of room in your stomach and also on your plate they're light they're fluffy they're absorbent which means that they are delicious but it also means that they're going to act like a spongy material in your stomach expanding and making you feel full sleepy and like it's maybe not worth it to go back for a fourth helping of that hand sliced kilbasa for evidence of why this strategy helps buffets i direct your attention to the satiety index an actual index of the relative satisfaction and fullness that various foods make you feel it's honestly worth doing a whole episode on this thing in particular because it can really help you with stuff like losing weight but today there are a couple takeaways from looking at this thing in measuring all kinds of foods from all kinds of food categories including desserts veggies different types of bread etc the developers of this satiety index actually concluded a few interesting things like that oranges are more satisfying than bananas strangely enough but also that the foods that make you feel most satisfied are carbohydrates so by giving you lots of bread right up front the buffet is actually already signaling to your body to tell it end this meal you have had enough stop right there shut your mouth hole shut it down on top of all of that which is already a lot those rolls potatoes huge mounds of rice jambalaya they're all taking up huge amounts of space on your plate meaning that you have less room for all the other stuff the good stuff the higher quality more expensive stuff when you arrive to it all of this leads to the first major rule of maximizing your buffet experience rule number one skip the bread skip the bread entirely don't be pulled in by the pasta and say piss off to those potatoes we are bee-lining it to the carving station my friend which uh actually incidentally is where buffets are imposing their second major mind game on you portion control it's not enough to just hide the expensive products on the buffet and if you've been to a vegas buffet you'll know that a lot of times the good stuff is practically hidden in a back alley behind the casino but when you do eventually find that expensive cut of meat or provide the secret password to receive your king crab legs it's still not usually you who gets to decide how much is going on your plate this ladies and gentlemen is where the manned carving station comes into play where the expensive meat is usually doled out in a much more reasonable portion than the slab of beef that most of us would like to serve ourselves on that plate excuse me sir what meats do you have on the buffet today new york strip rib eye skirt steak i'll take all of them then they give you a little portion and then you're like lisa i'd like some more it's like a modern day oliver and that ladies and gentlemen acting the number one protein item that you're likely to find in your buffet line is chicken because quite frankly it's the cheapest 89 cents a pound and beyond chicken they usually don't trust you to serve yourself the carving station is this place usually manned by a tall imposing guy who's essentially the bouncer of the meat while he's there to serve you as much as you'd like in theory and thereby give you this premium eating experience oh look someone's carving my meat for me what he's really there to do is one control the size of the portion you're being served so that you can't eat a whole prime rib by yourself or even worse waste that prime rib take too much and then end up throwing it away and two every time you want to get another helping of roast beast you have to ask a human being to give it to you going up for seconds hey it's buffet do your thing going up for fifths now your brain's telling you that the meat bouncer is judging you for your gluttony internally he's like huh well well look who's back you want another serving there are people dying of hunger all over the world but sure you just cramming that fat back bacon down your gullet no problem and so instead of asking for more like you want you instead slink away and mumble that you'll just top up with another one of those yeast rolls in this way the buffet can still give you the illusion of luxury items as being all you can eat but serving you the most expensive things in small controlled portions another way that buffets do this is by serving you things on pre-portioned plates which either take up a ton of room on your existing plate or you have to dedicate a whole hand to holding that plate in this way they keep your portion small and ensure that you can only pick up like one two maybe max four of these items every time you return to the buffet the last manipulation along these lines that's happening right there on the buffet line is literally from the second you start the plate you pick up plates and bowls at all you can eat buffets tend to be smaller than the plates that you get at other restaurants now while we might initially think that this wouldn't make a difference since what i can get as many plates as i want that's actually not the case according to one study simply giving subjects a larger bowl for their ice cream led to them serving themselves and consuming 31 more ice cream than those who were given a smaller bowl and those that were given larger serving spoons ate 15 more for proof of this principle in action think about all those self-serve frozen yogurt places that are all the rage these days my favorite is yogurtland where i am no joke a platinum carrying member since 2013 in fact but when i go in i know that the bowl sizes that they give out are enormous they're designed to trick me into thinking that i have to fill them up otherwise why did i go there if i just got a little swirl in the bottom then you get to the end of the line and suddenly you're paying by the weight of the yogurt in your cup and the whole idea is that you just realized oh wait i served myself literally 12 pounds of yogurt this is like a 50 bowl of ice cream but hey you know what it's healthy because it's yogurt it's not anyway in the same way that yogurtland wants me to buy like 700 ounces of yogurt and hot fudge in one sitting is how i got to be a platinum card member in the first place the buffet actually wants to trick me into doing the exact opposite they give you smaller plates they give you smaller bowls even smaller silverware sometimes in an effort to get you to put less on your plate and thereby eat less this should make sense if you've ever tried this trick on a diet where one of the most well-known tips is to put your food on smaller plates average dinner plates sold in stores here in the us are around 12 inches today but buffets tend to use plates that are in the 9 to 10 inch range a little smaller than average in the us and enough to take our plate area from 113 to 78 square inches meaning that you have over 20 percent less space for the food you want to put on that thing that real life buffet example that we went to plates 9 10 inches boom right on target research in real life for the win additionally every time you have to get up and go back to the buffet you have to overcome some social stigma of getting more food which even if that exists in your head you imagine that the people around you that your server that everyone will notice that they'll start judging you for it so the takeaway of all these psychological mind games first know that they're mind games that aren't accidentally there they are intentionally placed between you and that sixth helping of spiral cut ham once you recognize that you're playing a game release that shame ladies and gentlemen make friends with that meat bouncer and play like a champ when you go out for helpings two and three mention casually that you're an ultra marathon runner the last pro tip for becoming the ultimate master of the buffet is that to perform well you need to prepare well like the professional bikers of the world train for the tour de france so shall you prepare your body for the tour de fried chicken at the golden corral at the end of the day the biggest thing that's standing in our way at the phase isn't the psychological tricks or the peer pressure or heck not even the meat bouncer it's our own bodies you may not consider buffet eating as a personal challenge and to be quite honest that's probably a good idea for you in the long run but again this whole episode is about optimizing our experience making the restaurant hurt because you ate your meal there and so that means you got to go all the way you know that feeling at a buffet where your stomach is like hey guys you know we can probably stop now and then you go up for two more plates and it's like hey we really need to stop eating now and then after like another two bowls of ice cream it's like nope shut it down well all of those feelings are coming as the result of a hormone called leptin that's leptin working on your body leptin is released when your body has all the energy that it needs and is like yeah we're pretty good down here tell the mouth to shut up on the other hand there's another hormone that tells you that you're really hungry and can definitely make it through another two slices of pie and that hormone is called ghrelin otherwise known as the hunger hormone this is kind of an oversimplified version of the system but the basic principle going into a buffet will be like you want your ghrelin to be really high and you want your leptin to be really low which is basically the fast track to overeating town so kept an obvious alert you shouldn't go to an all-you-can-eat buffet with a full stomach obviously but there are actually a few other things that you can do to induce ghrelin production one study found that subjects who are given carbonated beverages about an hour after a late breakfast produced ghrelin at a rate four to five times that of people who just drank water and it wasn't sugary sodas that spiked ghrelin production the most it was actually unflavored carbonated water so all of this gives us strategy number one an hour before your buffet experience chug yourself some seltzer water make sure that those ghrelin levels are as high as possible and then of course we're trying to make our appetite raging so we should probably crush ourselves a few hours on the stair master right make ourselves even hungrier no actually that's not right at all research shows that moderate exercise has little effect on ghrelin production in the body but strangely enough longer aerobic workouts with higher intensity actually lead to decreases in ghrelin production even when you compare it to control groups who weren't exercising at all therefore strategy number two lay around like a slug before you go to the all-you-can-eat buffet just sit there chug in your seltzer water and only eat a little you're set man maybe i should rename this as the general guide to getting diabetes last when it comes to delaying the onset of leptin remember that a buffet is a marathon and not a sprint sure you might come in as ravenous as a hungry raccoon but after two plates of that pork fried rice you're down for the count so to keep your leptin levels low remember stick to the plan of low carb eating at least at the very beginning because again those are the foods that are going to fill you up the fastest leave those carbs for the end of the meal where they belong stuff like a monster brownie ice cream sundae that all important chocolate fountain same thing goes with sugary drinks skip those and stick to water because it's not going to affect your ghrelin levels as significantly as anything with sweetener and lastly while you're doing all of this eating of beef while you're drinking your water which sounds just like a terrible meal but you know what you are that determined to get your money's worth out of this buffet also make sure that you don't pay attention to what you're eating while you're eating it that's right people who are distracted while they eat whether it's multitasking or watching a television show or whatever they all tend to consume more than those whose brains aren't otherwise occupied so bring yourself a crossword puzzle paint watercolors in one hand while you crush some taquitos in the other or heck watch this video to remind yourself why you're there not to enjoy yourself a nice meal but to send as much of the high ticket items down your digestive system as possible to stick it to whoever charged you fifty dollars for that bacchanal buffet and with that you have done it my friends you are now the master of the buffet so that said you now know all the secrets to take on the world of the phase go forth and use those powers wisely no one likes an upset tummy so remember that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit hey friends 2021 matpat checking in hope you enjoyed the whole walk down memory lane but also brand new content thing that we tried out today but above all else i hope you enjoyed my green screen acting also can i just say as i re-watched this episode two years from when we first produced it the cringy thing that stuck out to me the most was how i literally had a pair of sweatpants slung over my shoulder for like two minutes at the top of this episode like i mentioned sweatpants once in passing as a joke so i don't know let me just introduce sweatpants as a practical prop that needs to stay on screen for the entire intro and then i decided not to get an actual key and instead made the editor's motion track a jpeg into my hand and then later i held a practical plate in my hands but needed a motion-tracked meatball to go on that plate like what is green screening matpat's relationship with his environment what is real in the food theory universe and what isn't i don't know what to tell you folks 2019 was apparently a weird time for me point is july 23rd is food theory's official one year anniversary and i'd like to take this opportunity to one remind you that if you want to celebrate along with us food theory merch is available right below this video including that amazing apron as well as that adorable pizza plushie inspired by my childhood only available for a limited amount of time so make sure you get those before supplies are gone and also to thank you all for watching for the last year and for giving feedback if the tone and style of today's episode struck you as a bit wonky well that's because it was made before we had the benefit of your input which has really helped us craft this channel over the past year into what it is now so please keep those comments coming i know us youtubers tend to joke about like oh don't go into the comments and things like that but really we're one of those channels that really take the feedback to heart so thank you from me steph and the whole food theory team it has been a great year and we're looking forward to serving up plenty more now as your second course i'd recommend watching the food optimization episode that wound up replacing this episode when we launched the channel we found out which fast food french fry order gets you the most deliciousness for your dollar thanks again for watching get your dollars worth at the next buffet you go to and make sure you listen to your parents kids cause if you don't green screen matpat will come for you in the night holding a jpeg of a knife

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,937,003

Rating: 4.9688106 out of 5

Keywords: buffet, menu, menu hack, beat the buffet, mukbang, food hack, bugdet, budget hack, food theorists, food theory, matpat, game theorists, film theorists, game theory, film theory, eat the menu, binging with babish, all you can eat buffet, las vegas buffet, best buffet, buffet mukbang, golden corral, souplantation, golden corral buffet, golden corral mukbang, sweet tomatoes, buffet challenge, buffet hack, ikea buffet hack, buffet food, buffet las vegas, food theory lost episode

Id: gM5KJ0SKjjo

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021

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[u/PlusScissors]

anybody else notice the 23th at the end?