My roommate from college went on to become a professor of engineering at Auburn. While a graduate student at Georgia Tech, he told me, he and his colleagues used to laugh about the “minimum publishable increment”, the lowest amount of research necessary to justify a paper and add to one’s curriculum vitae.
I often reflect on the MPI concept when I read groundbreaking research like this from our alma mater*, “Survey shows chefs serve big portions“:
“The results suggest that chefs’ determination of food portions is driven more by customer demand that calorie content,? said Barbara J. Rolls of Pennsylvania State University, co-author of the study. ?While the majority of chefs acknowledge the role of portion size in energy intake and weight management, many still place the responsibility on customers to consume amounts of food appropriate for their energy needs.?
Shock!? Apparently the ideal world will consist of chefs who assess diners’ body-mass index before serving their plates. Of course, that may be the job of the maitre d’. I’m sure the Johnson & Wales campus in Charlotte can shed some light on the matter.
* Appropriately here, alma is Latin for “nourishing”. Should we assume the researchers’ experience with the restaurant business is based on school cafeterias and college dining halls? Somehow the doctrine of in loco parentis doesn’t enter my mind when I consider The Angus Barn or 42nd Street Oyster Bar in Raleigh but it seems to be on the researchers’.
