Yesterday’s baguette dilemma
Yesterday’s baguette dilemma
Yum Yum — Picture of baguettes
In my wife’s family, we have a recurrent problem.
When I go visit my mother in law with my wife, we often buy a “baguette” on the way.
Later, at time to slice the bread, things go wrong: My mother in law generally have a remainder of bread from the previous day: it is the “Yesterday’s half baguette”.
While we usually would want to eat bread in the order we bought it [1], it’s also annoying to eat some less fresh bread when we have a delicious “baguette from the day” at disposal [2][3].
So we are torn between:
- Eat first yesterday’s not fresh half baguette then continue with half of today fresh bread. 50% not fresh bread, 50% fresh bread and leave a new remainder of (soon-to-be) not fresh bread for tomorrow :/
- Eat first (and only) today’s fresh bread.
100% fresh bread, but leaving now a (soon-to-be) 2 days half baguette for tomorrow :/
| Important decision | Freshness | Wasteness |
|---|---|---|
| Eat yesterday’s baguette first | 50% | 50% |
| Eat today’s baguette first | 100% | 100% |
None of these choices fixes our problem on both freshness and wasteness.
And the problem repeats forever.
This is the Yesterday’s baguette dilemma.
[1] Mother in law’s view
[2] Wife and step sister’s view
[3] Baguettes are independents, not like newspapers