Why Do We Cook Too Much for the People We Love?

A cook and a psychologist explain why we show our affection with overflowing platters and demands for second helpings.

The candles are lit. I’ve dispatched my husband to pour the wine and dole out radicchio salad while I plate the main event — enough bucatini all'Amatriciana to feed 10 people, which I’ve decided is enough for the six of us. As I dole out twice the “recommended” (says who?!) serving size into each bowl — leaving enough in the pot for a few second helpings — the old doubt creeps in: Did I make enough food? By the time my husband returns to help garnish and run the food to the table, I’ve resorted to redistributing single noodles among the bowls, convinced the future owner of bowl four will feel slighted. Of course, no one seems to need more pasta, owing partly to all the crab delights and cheese I plied them with before dinner began.

“Do you think they liked it?” I moan during cleanup, apparently forgetting the effusive compliments I’d fished for and received throughout the meal. The following night, the leftovers reheat like pale, bloated noodle corpses; the sauce’s jammy remains are caked on like dried mud. I pick at it brattily, compost half and go to bed unsatisfied.

This is a common scene, whether I’m making dinner for two or six, whether I’m cooking lemony rigatoni with kale or enchiladas or chicken and dumplings. No matter that I’ve cooked for the people I love for 15-plus years. I still worry I haven’t made enough — or, more accurately, the quantity I deem to be enough.

But what sort of host would I be if I didn’t stuff my guests to the gills?

I recruited licensed clinical psychologist Meryl Pankhurst of Primary Care Psychology Associates in Chicago (who I met at a mixer with an abundance of appetizers), to help me answer this question — culturally, mentally, and generationally.

Pankhurst tells me that it’s not surprising many of us struggle with cooking too much in a culture that normalizes excessive consumption. “Overfeeding is a cultural representation of our over-consumerism,” says Pankhurst. “We live in a society in which excess is considered just the right amount.”

She’s right; simply conjure representations of Thanksgiving feasts, lavish dinner party spreads, or the seemingly bottomless buffets of restaurants, hotels, and cruise ships. But these images don’t come from nowhere: so many of us find pleasure in gathering around a table brimming with food, whether that’s during the holidays, on vacation, or at a Saturday night potluck with friends. After all, many of our fondest gatherings are centered around food, Pankhurst says. Why not prepare a lot to prolong such an enjoyable experience?

“I think abundant food is very often utilized as an expression of love and hospitality,” Pankhurst explains. “Overpreparing is our tangible attempt to articulate love and the way in which we feel it: authentically and in abundance.”

At its deepest, most primordial level, feeding the people we love in excess emerges from a need to create comfort and security — two feelings we can never get enough of in this often uncomfortable business of being human, Pankhurst says.

“The laborious act of cooking, of preparing with our hands this bountiful medicine that people can scoop up, taste, or stick a fork into provides pleasure, satisfaction, and relief both for those of us who are preparing it and for the ones we feed.”

I can’t help but think of my German immigrant grandmother who was never wealthy but always snuck chocolates into our pockets and generously filled our dinner tables with roasts, her homegrown produce, homemade jams, and freshly baked breads. My mother (my Oma’s daughter) cooked for my dad, sister, and me almost every night of my childhood, instilling in us the mantra that “food is love.” Mom is the sort who exclaims, “There’s more!” before any of us take our first bite of food but also finds sneaky ways to remind us that said meals were a burden she undertook on our behalf. (“It’s a real pain in the neck to slice all that eggplant so thin for eggplant parm,” she’ll say, which we take as a hint to again compliment them heartily and finish every last morsel.) Relatedly, she takes it as a personal slight when whoever she is feeding doesn’t request seconds.

I recognize myself doing the same things now — when I panic about noodle distribution and (jokingly) warn my friends that if they don't finish their food I’ll assume they hated it.

“It’s possible we prepare and serve too much so we don't experience the feeling of not being enough,” Pankhurst muses. “An overabundance of food solidifies our worthiness or value. It helps us achieve certain — not questionable — success, defined by our ability to over-prepare and execute.”

In other words, how can you see me as a failure? Look how full you are! And what are we, the providers, left with? Perhaps the fleeting reassurance of approval, which may be subsumed by guilt about perpetuating the very real problem of food waste in a reality in which many others are without. Sure, we can start composting. But we can also choose to approach these long-held behaviors with curiosity. Through reflection or therapy, we may learn we resort to this tendency because of a learned scarcity mindset that began generations ago, or as a means to win approval.

“We have to hold ourselves accountable,” Pankhurst says when I ask how to curtail my need to cook so much food. “What is affecting us? How can we proceed differently?”

I resolve to start small — with dried pasta. Pankhurst asks if I’ve ever tried preparing less than my “safe” excess of pasta. “Yes.”

“It probably has been accompanied by significant discomfort,” she says.

“Yes! What if my husband or dinner party guests or I leave hungry?”

“By exposing yourself to what you fear, you’ll see that it isn’t in fact so scary,” she says. Sure, I might feel that old, deep-rooted anxiety as I watch the coiled heap in the pot diminish. Oh no, did I make enough? I might even consider preparing more food to ensure everyone at the table is adequately, aka profoundly, stuffed. But then I realize I’m probably doing all of this to avoid the discomfort of trying something different. “You can be uncomfortable, and you can be OK,” she adds.

I realize that I am a restless creature who delights in dreaming up something new for dinner each night and who loathes leftovers almost as much as food waste. I admit that my calculation of what’s “enough” could be a little — ahem — flawed. Indeed, when someone says they’ve had enough they might actually mean it. And if not, it’s not the end of the world if my well-fed and appreciative dinner guests eat a few handfuls of Cheez-Its after they get home. But it’s probably better if they don’t tell me about it.

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