What to eat

Twelve options, already on the wheel

The reason this decision is hard is not that there are no options. It is that listing them is the tedious part, and by the time you have typed twelve meals you have lost the will to eat any of them.

So this page opens on twelve. One click swaps the whole set for fast food, home cooking, takeaway, or vegetarian — four sets of twelve, none of which you had to think of.

Why this decision resists being made

Food is a low-stakes choice made repeatedly with a group, which is precisely the shape of decision people are worst at.

The stakes are too low to justify a real discussion, but not low enough that anyone will simply pick. Nobody wants to be responsible for the meal being disappointing, so everyone defers, and twenty minutes disappear into "I don't mind, what do you want?". A wheel is not better at choosing than you are — it is better at ending the deferral, because once it has picked, no one has to have been the one who picked.

Narrowing before you spin

The wheel is more useful when the twelve options are already possible ones, so cut before you spin rather than after.

By time. If it needs to be on the table in twenty minutes, delete anything that does not. A wheel that can land on a three-hour braise on a Tuesday is a wheel you will overrule, and overruling it once means you were never really using it.

By what is in the house. For home cooking, delete what you cannot cook tonight. This takes thirty seconds and removes every result you would have rejected.

By budget. Takeaway sets are easy to fill with options that are twice the price of each other. Splitting that decision from the food decision means the wheel is not quietly making it.

Dietary needs are not a weighting

If someone cannot eat something, it comes off the wheel — it does not get a low weight.

Weights are for preferences: pizza three times as likely as salad because that is the mood. An allergy or a restriction is not a preference, and a wheel that can land on it will eventually land on it. This sounds obvious and is the mistake people make with weighted wheels, because reducing something to 1% feels like removing it and is not.

Then actually eat it

The wheel is only useful if the result stands. Spin twice and you are back to deciding, with an extra step.