All You Can Eat?

Why exactly is it that most people gorge themselves at an all-you-can eat buffet?  Is it the desire to try everything that is available and presented?  Is it the constant mother/father that was in the ear sternly stating, "Clean your plate.  There are starving children in China/Africa/wherever." phenomena?

My family generally doesn't "do" these types of buffets because we just don't eat very much.  You wouldn't think so to look at us...lol.  We aren't overly skinny, and in fact, my husband and son are both very brawny and hefty.  We would never get our money's worth at a buffet.  So, we just don't.  I'm totally discounting all of our heebie jeebies about germs and all that I learned during my VERY BRIEF time maintaining the buffet counter at Shoney's and hostessing at Ryan's many years ago.

We did have occasion recently to eat at what I would consider an all-you-can-eat buffet type place and I found myself watching the people around me.  We were at the Jacksonville State University cafeteria for an unofficial visit with our son and as part of the visit, we were to be fed (for free..lol) in the cafeteria.  Because of a rain delay, we were only given 20 minutes in the cafeteria.  As we sat and watched the people around us, my husband remarked, "I wonder if they only gave 20 minutes because of the rain or if they were worried everyone would clean the place out?"

I had to laugh because I looked at our table and between the three of us, we had four plates.  A salad we shared on one plate, a piece of spinach and tomato pizza for me, a cheeseburger for the kid on his plate, and another cheeseburger for the hubby on his plate.  They each had fries as well.  We felt like we were overdoing it because we got a salad to share. When I looked around at the other visitors, I saw tables of three and four with 10 and 12 plates of food stacked up.  Not all of these tables were just adults, either.  These were little kids eating more than one plate of food.

So, I wondered if they were just starving from making the same walk around campus and the football stuff that we had or if they wanted to make sure they didn't get hungry during the game and have to spend $3 for a hotdog?  Or was it the desire to try everything in the place?  I did notice the one guy, actually the biggest guy in the group of players visiting, eating the healthiest of all of us.  He had one plate, with just a wrap on it.  Kudos to him for not bending to the "Eat it all...there are starving children" mentality.