One of my favorite lunches is a quick and simple meal of broccoli and turkey. All I really need to do is pop the raw broccoli + the turkey in the microwave, and viola, I have steamed veggies and some meat! My old manager never truly understood this. “Jason, some people live to eat, but you eat to live, don’t you.”

The real answer is: it depends!

I consume food as a function of 4 variables:

• Health as H
• Cost as C
• Taste as T
• Ambiance as A

These 4 variables are influenced by 1 coefficient, X, which embodies:

• the people that I am with (company)
• desire to create memories

Desire for food Y can be imagined in a function as simple such as:

Y = [(H) + (X/4)^2*(T + A)]/C

X = 10 is when I’m sitting in Paris with on my honeymoon (I would like to immortalize this moment)
X = 1 is when I’m I have 15 minutes between meetings to grab food (Hurry up body, this chewing is distracting)

Generally speaking, anything with X =< 4 and means I’m generally disregarding Taste and Ambiance as a deciding factor on my food. In other words, the health and the cost are going to be the primary drivers. However, if you catch me on vacation (maybe around the X = 6-7 range), I’m going to start paying a little more attention to that taste and ambiance levels.

Of course, whenever the C cost approaches 0, the desire for that food reaches almost infinity. If you serve me an amazingly healthy, tasty, and free food in amazing ambience…