Last month, I dined out at two different buffet restaurants, spending $6 each. I had not eaten any paid meal at restaurants for many years, so this was quite a splurge for me. I always love a big feast and $6 seemed a low price to pay for a new all-you-can-eat experience.
8. Go for the salad bar! The salad bar is really the best, seriously. It is filled with fresh ingredients unadulterated by added sugar, fat, and salt. Go ahead, eat as much fresh raw vegetables as you can. Green peppers, red onions, broccoli, cucumbers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, carrots, romaine lettuce, spinach are all excellent choices.
While cheap, delicious, and healthy, eating just pinto beans, oatmeal, and peanut butter everyday was getting a bit monotonous. I felt that a low cost buffet is a efficient and fun way to add some variety and get additional nutrients for my diet.
I love buffets! There is something irresistible about all you can eat. No limit! Total freedom! I hate going to a restaurant, or anywhere for that matter, eat just a plate, and leave still feeling hungry. You turned on your digestive system and left it unfulfilled. It's like a tease. It would have been better not to eat anything at all.
Furthermore, you don't need to leave a tip at a buffet, unlike most restaurants where a tip is expected.
So, I ate at a Chinese buffet for $6 and an Italian buffet for $5.93. The former was a dismal, while the latter was heavenly, and I learned some valuable lessons along the way, which I will share with you below. My advice is a bit contrarian, because the goal here is to maximize the intake of nutrients, rather than the food items with the highest market prices, as many others might recommend, if you just do an online search about how to eat in a buffet.
Some rules about getting the most out of a buffet are universal. Here is a quick summary of these uncontroversial rules:
1. Do your research first. Look for the best buffet deals. Check the prices and menu online if available. Read online reviews, and look at posted pictures of the buffet offerings. A picture is worth a thousand words and can help you rule in or rule out a buffet.
2. Drink plenty of water before you go. Water distends your stomach so you can eat more. Just don't drink too much right before you eat at a buffet, or you might feel full.
3. Do a good workout beforehand. Exercise burns calorie and makes you hungrier.
4. Don't drink soda, at least not till the end. Soda produces gas that bloats the stomach and cause you to eat less. Just drink water instead. If you want to drink soda, save it till the end, and it could even help you stuff the last plate of food down.
5. Scout the buffet first. Walk around to get an idea of what food options are available before you put inferior food items on your plate.
6. Start with small portions. This is especially true for unfamiliar food that you are not absolutely sure you would like. You want to start small to see if you like it. If so, you can always go back for more.
To that list above, I add the following contrarian rules to help maximize the value of a buffet:
7. If you are not 100% sure, just go for the lowest priced buffet. Although higher priced buffets may offer greater variety and more expensive food options, they are not necessarily worth the additional price. It is much easier to get your money's worth at a $6 buffet, than an a $12 buffet. Sure, the $12 buffet might offer you crab legs, which are very expensive. But is eating a lot of crab legs good for your health? Does it make sense to spend $12 on food in just a day, regardless of what food it may be?
Eating at a low priced buffet is like buying a stock with low valuation: the expectations are so low that it is easy to exceed them, and when you do, you win. Eating at a high priced buffet is like buying a stock with lofty valuation: the expectations are so high that even great earnings results might not suffice to exceed them, and when you don't, you lose.
8. Go for the salad bar! The salad bar is really the best, seriously. It is filled with fresh ingredients unadulterated by added sugar, fat, and salt. Go ahead, eat as much fresh raw vegetables as you can. Green peppers, red onions, broccoli, cucumbers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, carrots, romaine lettuce, spinach are all excellent choices.
Avoid the croutons (highly processed white flour with added salt and fat), bacon bits (highly processed, high salt and fat), iceberg lettuce (low nutrient content), and salad dressing (high fat, salt, and sugar). Be sparing with the olives (high salt) and starchy vegetables like beets, corn, and peas (starchy means high sugar content and they fill you up with low nutrients).
The Italian buffet I went to had a decent salad bar with many excellent choices. I filled my plates with mostly the best ingredients and topped with a little marinara sauce (to make the salad taste better, but avoid it if you can; use vinegar instead if available). Below is a plate of nice salad I ate there. I ate a total of 9 such plates!
It filled me up till I know there was no way I could eat another plate anymore; though I felt really full when I left the buffet, the fullness subsided within half an hour but I was still left with satiety and felt very much energized. That's how I know it was a truly great meal!
Some folks tell you to avoid the buffet because vegetables are cheap. They tell you to go for the expensive meats instead. Well, the meat is more expensive because it costs more to produce and demand is high because it tastes good, but they give you too little of the micronutrients you need and too much of the saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, salt you don't need. Remember, price is what you pay, but value is what you get. Getting those meat may maximize the prices of food you eat, but go with fresh vegetables if you want the best value in terms of real nutrients.
Also, fresh vegetables are not really that cheap (especially those pricey mushrooms and cherry tomatoes)! They easily cost more than a dollar a pound at my local supermarket. I think I ate at least 10 lb worth so that is at least $10.
9. Avoid buffets that don't have a salad bar or good alternatives. If you don't get a salad bar in a buffet, that should already be a huge red flag. In that case, does it offer anything else decent? Are there any fruits? Nuts and seeds? Steamed vegetables? None of the above? Hard pass. Don't waste another second there, unless it's free.
That $6 Chinese buffet was a total ripoff. No salad bar or any decent alternatives. Virtually everything was heavily salted or deep fried or both. White rice is an unhealthy refined grain with little fiber, but it was the healthiest food item available there. At least it wasn't heavily salted and greasy. Everything else was so greasy that I tried to wipe off the excess greasy with napkins but it was hopeless. Even after soaking through a big stack of napkins, it still remained greasy. That amount of grease turns your stomach sick. I guess it is a nice trick the Chinese buffet uses to make sure you can't eat enough to get your money's worth. There is no way you can eat 3 plates full of deep fried greasy and heavily salted food without feeling bloated and sick to your stomach. I'm just glad I did not die of a heart attack after ingesting all that fat including tons of trans fat. I will never eat there again (and be very skeptical of any Chinese buffets for that matter) unless it's free. Even if it cost only $1, it's not worth it because I can eat a decent meal and be full for just $1 a day.
10. Don't get tempted by the unhealthy food in a buffet. In the Italian buffet, most folks were filling their plates with pizzas instead of salad, and the pizzas smelled really good while the salad smelled... well, nothing.
I felt I was eating enough salad and it was okay to indulge in a slice or pizza or two. That turned into three slices. I regretted it, because I could have filled myself up with an additional plate of salad had I not eaten those slices of pizza.
On that note, pizza is truly cheap. A full pizza or maybe two will probably fill you up, and they don't cost $6 to make. White flour, sugar, salt are dirt cheap, and cheese isn't that expensive either. So whether you are trying to maximize nutrients (I recommend) or market price (others recommend), don't eat the pizzas.
There is nothing redeeming about pizzas, from the white bread dough filled with refined carbohydrates and salt, to the cheese filled with saturated fat and cholesterol and salt. If you get pizzas with meat toppings, it gets even worse. If you are tempted, just say no. Nothing there, move on and get another plate of salad instead!
So there you have it! Ten rules to getting the most out of a buffet! Remember these rules the next time you go out to eat or in a casino.
Nutrition Facts Analysis
The information below is for those who want to delve more into the facts behind my contrarian approach to buffet eating. Feel free to skip it if you like.
I created a table of nutrition facts based on google results for various salad bar food items per 100 gram:
I colored coded low sodium green and high sodium red, as well as those relatively high in protein, Vitamin A and C. The green colored food items (green peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, carrots) are truly nutrient powerhouses and should comprise most of the plate. The red colored food items are high in sodium and should be used sparingly. Don't exclude them completely, as they have something unique to offer (pickled cucumbers is a source of probiotics, while black olives provides good monounsaturated fat to help absorb the fat soluble vitamins).
Also go light on the beets. It's starchy and fills you up with less nutrients. Sugar content is also higher than most.
The following table estimates how much I ate in 9 plates of salad with these ingredients:
The number under the "one plate" estimates how many 100 gram of each food item I put onto a plate. 100 gram is roughly half a cup. Total in one full plate of salad is about 12 x 100 gram or about 6 servings of vegetables (1 servings = 1 cup raw).
So 1 plate is about 6 servings of vegetables, and 9 plates is about 54 servings. That's pretty much a week's worth of USDA recommended servings of vegetables. I wish only I could absorb that much in one setting.
Total calorie is 3035, which seems high, but it is unlikely to be all absorbed when consumed in one setting.
Total fat is 44 g, not bad, especially considering saturated fat is only 4 g or just 10% of total fat.
Zero cholesterol! Yay!
Na at 6206 mg is high, thanks to those salty pickled cucumbers and black olives, but given that K is much higher at 26322 mg, not bad. Every time K is more than Na by a factor of 4 to 1, that's a win in my book.
197 g of fiber is incredible, considering that the USDA recommended fiber intake is only 30 g and most Americans don't even get that much.
168 g of protein is also great. Despite what people might tell you, vegetables do contain protein. You don't need meat or even tofu and beans. Granted, 168 g is only 1.6% of the total 10700 g of total food eaten, so vegetables are indeed a poor source of protein, but it is possible to get enough protein from vegetable. You just have to eat a lot of it!
All the vitamin A and C, Ca and Fe far exceed recommended daily intake.
It is probably not possible to absorb all that nutrients when consumed in one setting, though it took me about two hours to eat all that food. Raw vegetables take a while to chew. But even if I absorb half or even a quarter of that, it is still a big win.
Concluding Remarks
$6 does not ruin my budget. I could definitely see myself eating again at the Italian buffet once or twice a month. More often than that not only adds cost but also makes the experience less special. As good as buffets are, you don't have to overdo it, which will not only ruin your budget but also take away from the experience because it won't be special anymore. Limiting it to once or twice a month makes it something to look forward to rather than a routine.
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