Competition, greed and skulduggery are the name of the game if
you want to eat your fill. Smorgasbord behaviour is surprisingly
complex A mathematician, an engineer and a psychologist go up to
a buffet… No, it's not the start of a bad joke. While most of us
would dive into the sandwiches without thinking twice, these
diners see a groaning table as a welcome opportunity to advance
their research. Look behind the salads, sausage rolls and bite-
size pizzas and it turns out that buffets are a microcosm of
greed, sexual politics and altruism - a place where our food
choices are driven by factors we're often unaware of. Understand
the science and you'll see buffets very differently next time
you fill your plate. The story starts with Lionel Levine of
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Katherine Stange of
Stanford University, California. They were sharing food at a
restaurant one day, and wondered: do certain choices lead to
tastier platefuls when food must be divided up? You could wolf
down everything in s