Hoteliers, it’s all your fault I over-ate

By Yeoh Siew Hoon

Last week, I was at the One World Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, attending the WORLDHOTELS conference, a gathering of its “unique and independent” brethren from across Asia.

In between sessions, it seemed we mostly ate. For breakfast, the hotel laid out a spread of local fare.

For coffee break, more sweets and pastries.

For lunch, it was the biggest buffet I had ever seen – and I have seen many buffets in my time. Malaysian, Italian, Japanese, Indian – it seemed the food of the whole world had converged into one world.

A couple of hours after that, we had another tea spread and sugar rush.

For dinner, we went to the poolside and there, yes, more food. Satay by the hundreds of sticks, fried noodles, fried rice, chicken curry – and that was just for a three-hour reception. It didn’t state dinner on the programme.

The closing dinner was held at the Palace of the Golden Horses. When we arrived, we were served canapés. We then sat down to a five-course dinner.

I then went from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, where more food awaited. It started on the flight – a full meal on business class, which I mostly skipped, but I couldn’t resist the walnut and date tart.

As soon as I arrived, I taxied to a friend’s place where dinner awaited me – a home-cooked spread of tomato and onion soup followed by steamed chicken, pasta and papaya salad, finished off with the most delicious chocolates from Sprungli, Switzerland, each handmade and rolled with tender, loving care.

I continued feasting through the next two days in Bangkok.

I attended the ASEAN Tourism Minister’s lunch hosted by CNN and ate my way through five courses at the Sofitel Centara Grand.

I was entertained to Italian and Thai (again at hotels) and then went out on my own to forage for street food. Who can resist spicy Thai noodles on the sois of Sukhumvit?

I then returned to Singapore and went straight to a travel event at a hotel of course – it was only a half-day session but there were at least three meals packed into it – breakfast, a coffee break and a buffet lunch.

And guess what the team-building session in the afternoon was about? A cook-out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to eat and I am one of those who live to eat – but I feel like in the last seven days, I haven’t stopped eating.

Those of us who attend travel conferences know what I mean – it seems there’s always too much food served at events. Hotels spend more time preparing menus than on making sure their audio-visual facilities work.

And at times, it almost feels like I am being force-fed – after all, I am only a weak woman with a sweet tooth and how can one say no to temptations that are so blatantly in your face?

Imagine my sense of relief then when I read an article this week that posed “an interesting thought: What if you’re not to blame for your weight problem?”

“What if the fault could be laid squarely at the feet of food manufacturers and marketers, grocery store managers, restaurant operators, food vendors – the people who make food so visible, available and tasty?” asked the article.

The argument is that “eating is an automatic behavior triggered by environmental cues that most people are unaware of – or simply can’t ignore.

Think of the buttery smell of movie theatre popcorn, the sight of glazed doughnuts glistening in the office conference room or the habit of picking up a whipped-cream-laden latte on the way to work”.

In other words, we are programmed to eat and when folks such as hoteliers tempt us the way they do, we cannot help but do so.

The article goes on to argue that if we want people to “eat less and at more healthily”, we must change the environment – by regulating portion sizes or deciding on places where food can be sold and eaten.

Well, I reckon hoteliers need to take this article into account – I think they need to reassess the way they feed delegates at events and the way they put together their buffets which are not only getting bigger but more glamorised ever since the whole concept of “restaurants as theatres” was invented.

Anyway, I am going on a diet from tomorrow and the way I am going to do this is to avoid all hotels – until the next travel event comes along.