The Phenomenon of Free Food

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but there is something magical about free food. Somehow, when food is free, it tastes infinitely better than when you have to pay for it. Let me explain…

In school (law school particularly, it would seem) you are inundated with free food. Due to the crazy scheduling of classes throughout the day, the only free time guaranteed to all is the lunch hour from 12 to 1 when no classes occur. So any group meetings or talks on campus are usually scheduled during that time. While there are some people on campus (red hots – those students who are insane about school, going so far as to read random cases during their spare time and read books about the law every night before bed, presumably so they can dream about the law as well) who simply attend these talks and discussions for the heck of it, the vast majority of us need some further draw to convince us to waste our precious free hour on even more law related matters. Some brilliant individual found the perfect lure and now everyone else has picked it up – food. Bring the food and we will come.

On any given day around campus you can find a free lunch in at least two different classrooms for the simple price of sitting and looking interested in what the speaker is saying. Want a Chinese buffet? Attend The Federalist Society monthly meeting. Fancy a little pizza (although you better watch out, since it’s most likely vegan at Lewis & Clark)? Come to the Westlaw presentation. And Subway is always provided at a LexisNexis event. There is a free lunch somewhere; you’ve just got to find it.

But on to the phenomenon of the free food…

I first noticed that free food tastes better when I attended an International Law Society meeting on campus during one lunch period. The offering that day was Baja Fresh, a Mexican food buffet of tacos, burritos, rice, beans, chips and salsa. Having never eaten Baja Fresh, but being a true lover of Mexican food, I decided to attend. And it was magical. Somehow, chips had never been so crisp, beans had never tasted quite so good, and the tacos were scrumptious. I was a convert. Baja Fresh was my new best friend. And to cement our friendship, I ate enough of the buffet for three people. (Picture me returning to the buffet line over and over again to pile even more chips on my plate and to grab “just one more taco.”) Since I couldn’t rely on getting free Baja Fresh every day (probably just once a week since groups switch up what they offer) I found a Baja Fresh near my house and decided to go get some tacos. Well, it was a disaster. The food was horrible! The chips didn’t have enough salt, the tacos were uninspired, and the beans were a bit soupy. “Strange, but,” I consoled myself, “it was probably just this Baja Fresh. I’m sure if I went to a different Baja Fresh, it would be better.” So a few days later, I was off again, this time sure I was going to the Baja location where the law school had ordered the food. This would be the place. It probably was, but the same thing happened again. I hated it. Clearly Baja Fresh was not my friend and the law school event had been the fluke.

Naturally, following this huge disappointment, I avoided Baja Fresh during my free lunch ramblings, but before long I found myself facing another Baja Fresh buffet line at the insistence of a friend that this is where we needed to be for lunch that day. Unenthusiastically, I filled up my plate. I sat down, dreading the first bite…*crunch*. Wait. That chip was amazing. Perfectly salty and crisp. I took a bite of beans. Yum! No soup here, just wonderful black beans. And the taco? Perfection. “What is going on here?” I asked myself, “How can this be?” I went back for seconds. I ate until I was sick and it was magnificent. Something was going on. “Is there something special about eating it at school?” No, that can’t be the case since I actually prefer not eating at school. It must be something else. And then it dawned on me – the difference between this food and going to Baja Fresh was that here, it was free. I didn’t have to pay for it, I didn’t have to worry about not getting enough or getting too much, I didn’t have to worry about paying for more chips! No, at school, it was all free and all mine. That was it! The magic of the food was that it was free.

To test this hypothesis I began to attend other lunches, eating a wide variety of foods to see if they tasted better because they were free. And yes, the hypothesis held true – the greasy Chinese tasted fantastic even though I hate overly greasy Chinese food, the pizza was scrumptious even though vegan pizza is disgusting (this has been proven the world over and holds true for anyone with actual tastebuds), and the Subway was great even though it was a ham sandwich and I hate Subway ham sandwiches. It was clear. The fact that it was free somehow transformed this food (or at least my perception of it) into something delicious. There was magic in the freeness. Free food inherently tastes better than when you pay for it.

What can we learn from this knowledge, you ask? When you have an opportunity to get some free food, snatch it up, because that food will never taste quite so good again.