My father always jokes that free food doesn’t taste as good. In the rare cases when he dislikes his dinner, he’ll ask my mother, who does all the shopping, if the main ingredient was buy-one-get-one-free, or fifty percent off, or perhaps purchased with a coupon. He can’t really mean it. At least I hope he doesn’t mean it. It would be a very silly thing to believe.
I happen to believe the exact opposite. Free food tastes great. I made a sandwich with English muffins today, English muffins that were free. Not only was it sort of a novelty to eat them, because I haven’t bought English muffins in years, but the very fact of their being free made me happy. Most of the time I have to give something up in order to save money, so I was thrilled that the grocery store sent me coupons that said, in effect, “Come get your free food!” I went and I went gladly and I will go again next week with my coupon for free soda!