Surviving the shaadi buffet - what actually works, and what backfires

Indian wedding and celebration buffets are a genre of their own - multiple live counters, an enormous spread, and real social pressure to fill (and refill) your plate as a mark of enjoying the occasion. The common survival strategies - skip meals earlier in the day, trust that a buffet naturally regulates itself, treat one big day as harmless - all sound reasonable. Some of them have a real kernel of truth in the research. Others don't hold up at all once you look at how buffets, variety and 'big day' eating actually behave. Here's the honest version, claim by claim.