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How to Decide What to Eat

Deciding what to eat is one of my biggest challenges before cooking. So, I'll describe it mathematically.

Calculation Method

Determining the Number of Meat and Vegetable Dishes

  • The number of dishes = Number of people + 1.
  • There should be one more meat dish than vegetable dishes, or the same number.

From this, you can determine the number of meat and vegetable dishes, and then select from the recipes in the previous step.

Formal Language Description

When there are N people, let a be the number of vegetable dishes and b be the number of meat dishes. N, a, and b are all integers.

The following inequalities apply:

  • a + b = N + 1
  • a ≤ b ≤ a + 1

Solving this gives:

const a = Math.floor((N+1)/2);
const b = Math.ceil((N+1)/2);

Choosing the Dishes

  • If there are more than 8 people, consider adding a fish dish among the meat dishes.
  • If there are children, consider adding dishes with a sweet flavor.
  • Consider adding signature or specialty dishes.
  • When deciding on meat dishes, avoid using meat from the same type of animal for all of them. The preferred order is: pork, chicken, beef, lamb, duck, fish.
  • Do not choose unusual or exotic animals for the meat dishes.

If you are still unsure, use the What to Eat Today? tool to decide what to have for dinner.