640g – or – The Perils of a Perfected System

One of the greatest challenges of living in Brazil is that the food is really good. I mean, it is really, extraordinarily, superbly good. Although it might seem that I am exaggerating, those who know Brazil can attest to the fact. Even a simple meal of fish, rice, beans and salad on the beach risks being delicious. One of the culinary phenomena that Brazil has mastered is the por quilo or by weight system. A por quilo is a restaurant which lays out a hot and cold buffet and charges patrons by how much the plate weighs. The trick, of course, being to eat, light yet costly food while staying away from the heavy, yet cheap dishes. Even without this logic though, the cost / benefit / taste advantage of these places is clear.

Por quilos in Brazil come in all shapes and sizes and are standard lunchtime fare. Choices can range from ten different dishes in a smaller and more popular por quilo to thirty or forty or even fifty different dishes in fancier por quilos. Cost can vary from R$8-10 [C$4.50 -5.50] a kilo to upwards of R$30 [C$16.50]. Being the main meal of the Brazilian day, my normal lunchtime weight hovers somewhere in the 430g vicinity. After years of weighing my lunch, I’ve come to understand my consumption patterns rather well! However, in the last two weeks, I have gone to two new por quilos which have had tons of tasty looking dishes laid out in front of me, tempting me to dig in and give them a try. So as it turns out, my two lunches at these new places both weighed in at 640g! While that is only 200g more than my usual consumption, one could also look at it as a 50 percent increase! Yikes! I’m thinking that the solution is to go back to these two places on a regular basis so that I do not need to feel the need to try everything when I do go. Of course, this strategy could be a problem should it backfire....