The Unspoken Plate Rule Cruisers Need To Avoid Breaking While Eating At The Buffet

Sure, you can wolf down a meal on a plane or a long-haul train, but they don't hold a candle to cruise dining. With top-tier chefs running the kitchens on many cruise lines, you're in for a treat, even if it's served buffet-style, which we all know isn't exactly famous for gourmet cuisine. Granted, they're not like those complimentary hotel breakfasts you might reconsider indulging in, but cruise buffets can often surprise you with their quality. Some lines are even praised for serving the best food at sea, so if you choose wisely, you're bound to enjoy an exceptional dining experience. Just do yourself (and everyone else) a favor — don't be that person who ignores the "new plate" rule and uses the same plate for another round.

It might seem harmless to reuse the same plate for your nth trip to the buffet spread, but it's a health issue that shouldn't be taken lightly. Phil Evans, managing director of the booking website Cruise Nation, told Daily Express that cruise workers prefer to handle a few extra dishes than deal with the potential health risks of passengers reusing them. "While it might seem like reusing the same plate, glass, or mug when it's time for seconds (or thirds, of course) saves the staff having to extra dishes, it's actually best to get a new one each time," they advised. "Reusing the same items is considered unsanitary." In short, while piling on another round of food is encouraged, just make sure you're doing it with a clean plate in tow — or risk unintentionally spreading germs.

If you think about it, the logic is pretty sound. Buffets typically involve everyone using the same serving utensils, which inevitably touch people's plates. So when you reuse your own plate, you're not just cutting corners, you're potentially tainting those utensils and, by extension, the food everyone else is eating. Maybe that explains why food poisoning is more common in cruises.

"I think people actually think they're doing you a favor. ... But the food that they're serving is coming in contact with what they just ate. So you end up eating after the other people that went through the buffet in front of you," chef and culinary instructor Keith Gardiner explained to WFMY News 2. "They have been eating so their saliva and everything is all over that plate. So when they put a portion of something on the plate, if that spoon touches the plate then it goes back into the food — that food is contaminated. So it's cross contamination from one person to the food to another person, so it's very dangerous."

Not reusing your plate is not exactly a big ask, don't you think? Even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has outlined in its Food Code (aka the bible for food safety) that restaurants must remind guests to always use fresh tableware at buffets — including new plates, utensils, and glasses each time. So really, you're just following proper hygiene guidelines. Plus, who wants their fresh food mingling with the remnants of the last round, anyway?