Hollow peg leg

This is the Fort Garry Hotel. Nice, isn't it? That slab of ugliness pressed right up against its backside is Fort Garry Place, which is where I live. If you haven't seen the view from my balcony, click here. It's actually a fine apartment. Just a shame it's such a tumour on the ass of an otherwise beautiful and historic building.

Every Sunday the hotel offers a popular brunch buffet. Since my fellow writer David's girlfriend was in town for the weekend, we decided to give the all-you-can-eat fine dining thing a whirl.

So after I managed to drag my punked-out sorry self out of bed Sunday morning, David, Anne and I went to feed at the upscale trough with a herd of Peggers in their Father's Day best. The hotel lobby was full of tables so obscenely laden with food that my pen ran out of ink just now while I was trying to draw a diagram to describe it. But it included all the regular breakfast foods (eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes), an omelette station, waffles, pastries, cheese, crackers, salads, sea food, terrines (bison with blueberries for example), roast prime rib, leg of lamb, chicken, a desert table, and fruit to dip in a chocolate fountain (note: apparently chocolate fountains are not to be used in the same way as drinking fountains). I could only handle three plates before I cried uncle and rolled myself around the corner back to my apartment, where I stretched out on the couch and napped the nap of the righteous buffet-loving Jew.

Isn't it strange how a sandwich and a piece of fruit can often make for a satisfying meal, but when confronted with a hotel lobby full of food, multiple heaping plates seems not just good but absolutely necessary? Turns out it might not just be a matter of trying to get your money's worth. This website describes a recently published book about over-eating that claims our appetite expands as we're exposed to greater number of flavours:

"We stay hungry longer the more diverse the flavors in a meal or snack," said Katz, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine. "If flavors are thoughtfully distributed, we fill up on fewer calories. This explains why, for instance, people can eat a holiday meal to the point of feeling unpleasantly full, yet still have room for dessert. No, that's not because you have a 'hollow leg!' It's because of sensory specific satiety; the hypothalamus is hard-wired to respond to flavors."

I guess it's simple: if you want to stop eating so much, limit your exposure to tasty foods.