The 7 Best Foods To Eat At A Hotel Breakfast Buffet And 7 You Might Want To Skip

When you're on vacation, the breakfast buffet is where your senses come alive for the day. These all-you-can-eat affairs are a necessary pit stop before you head out to see the world. While browsing the buffet you'll find everything from eggs to pancakes to local favorites. While some of the many foods you'll find are perfect to start your day, there are others that might be best left under the heat lamp.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, breakfast buffets were a risk because they are high-traffic areas where multiple people share space, time, and serving spoons. Hoteliers across the world have adapted their practices to mitigate these risks, and in the process have made the buffets even classier. Measures like individually plated and wrapped food items and servers being on hand to serve your food have become more common. All of this makes for a way more relaxing, up-market experience.

But while breakfast buffets may have changed their style, they may not have changed their food. Breakfast buffets usually have a wide variety of foods to choose from, and these can range pretty widely in their nutritional quality and freshness. And when it's the first thing in the morning, it can be difficult to accurately figure out which food items are the best-made and healthiest, and which will leave you feeling dissatisfied or sluggish. And that's why we decided, once and for all, to spill the beans about which breakfast buffet items to leave off your plate, and which to stock up on.

Scrambled eggs are hardly the most appetizing item at a breakfast buffet. More often than not, they are a lumpy, slightly sloppy affair, piled into a tureen where they're left to slowly coagulate under a heat lamp. This mixture is broken down even further by the endless streams of people coming over to stir it mindlessly and then move on, meaning that instead of getting well-formed curds, you're essentially left with a stodgy egg soup.

Hotel breakfast buffet scrambled eggs are also frequently made using slightly questionable ingredients and methods, which helps them avoid the labor of having to crack and beat endless amounts of eggs (and therefore save time and money). Instead of cooking them in a pan, some hotels simply mix plastic-wrapped powdered eggs with water and microwave them, before breaking the grey lumps of eggs that form down with a potato masher. Although powdered eggs are made from dehydrated fresh eggs, meaning they carry a lot of the same nutrition, it's hardly a gourmet recipe — and there's no accounting for any additives that are placed into powered egg mixtures to add flavor or improve texture.

We can understand why cantaloupe might be an appealing choice at a buffet. As fresh fruit, it can be a light, invigorating way to kick off your day of sightseeing, and it's full of important nutrients like beta-carotene, folate, and potassium. However, it can also be uniquely problematic from a food safety perspective. Cantaloupe is especially prone to harboring bacteria because of its rind, which has a netted structure. This essentially gives microbes lots of places to hide and makes it harder to clean them effectively, increasing the chance that the bacteria make their way to your plate.

Cantaloupes and other melons are also way more prone to growing bacteria on their flesh, due to the fruit's composition. Melons have an unfortunate combination of a high water content, an abundance of natural sugars, and an almost neutral pH level. This all makes it highly attractive to bacteria -– and they love it even more when the fruit is left at room temperature for a significant length of time, creating the ideal situations for germs to thrive. As such, we'd recommend giving cantaloupe a wide berth at the buffet, unless it's just been sliced or has been clearly kept at refrigerated temperatures. ‌

Sausages, bacon, and other breakfast meats form a core part of pretty much every breakfast buffet out there. But while they may be familiar and reliably tasty, they're also far from the healthiest thing you can eat. Sausage and bacon are both processed meats and can contain high levels of sodium and saturated fat, with the latter potentially having a detrimental effect on cholesterol levels, per the NHS.

Additionally, processed meats can also have nitrates or nitrites in them, which act to extend their lifespan, but which can also have an impact on your health, and most notably your bowel health. When you consume nitrates or nitrites, you also consume N-nitroso compounds, which are potentially volatile chemical contaminants. These compounds can increase the risk of developing bowel cancer, according to the Cancer Council – and that can happen when eating as little as 50 grams of processed meat daily. 

While fresh pastries are usually a good choice at a breakfast buffet, packaged pastries and muffins might be slightly less appealing. Packaged pastries tend to become overly soft and flabby, with the condensation that gets trapped inside the plastic ruining their flaky texture. These pastries can also have preservatives and additional ingredients in them as, unlike fresh pastries, they're made with shelf-life in mind — and it can be difficult to check exactly what's inside each one when they're sitting in the buffet line-up.

Muffins, too, can be supremely high in sugar, and may also contain corn syrup. While this gives them a next-level sweetness, it's also a potential consideration for our health. Corn syrup is abundant in processed foods, but it has also been associated with numerous health concerns, like weight gain, higher cholesterol levels, and harm to the liver. High fructose corn syrup (or HFCS), a common form of the sweetener, may also be problematic for your pancreas, with a study conducted by UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center indicating that the high fructose levels in HFCS could potentially contribute to cancer growth. As with packaged pastries, it's also difficult to tell which ingredients are in muffins, and which other preservatives or additives may have been included.

The most basic of breakfast buffets usually have a selection of breakfast cereals, and if you're not in the mood to choose, they can present a safe option — especially if you're traveling with kids. But even those that are innocent-looking can be surprisingly unhealthy. Cereals are highly processed foods, and a huge amount of sugar can be added to them. Kids' cereals can be especially sugary and contain more than cereals marketed to adults, with some bowls containing the equivalent of 2½ teaspoons of sugar.

Cereals can also be full of additional ingredients that both preserve them and improve their appearance, with dyes like Red Dye 40 being associated with ADHD and irritability in children, via Healthline. This is all made more complicated by the fact that at many breakfast buffets, cereals are decanted into bowls or containers instead of being kept in their original boxes. This means that you have no way of checking exactly which ingredients have been included, or how much sugar is in a serving. 

Many breakfast buffets, as well as lunch and dinner ones, provide an array of condiments to spice up your food. But these can be surprisingly dangerous, and not just if you accidentally pick an extra-hot sauce. Shared condiment dispensers are a hotbed for germs due to the high level of use by multiple patrons. These dispensers often don't get as much cleaning attention as other communal areas at a buffet and aren't swapped out like serving spoons. Therefore, in a single service, you might have dozens of people making contact with them and potentially spreading microbes.

Remember, too, that this can also occur with other communal items. Drink menus and salt and pepper shakers on your table might be cleaned infrequently. If your breakfast buffet has a drinks dispenser or a soda fountain, this is also likely to be a high-traffic area that sees numerous people touching it throughout the morning. Soda machines should be cleaned rigorously on a daily basis to maintain the best hygiene practices and keep them healthy — and if the dispenser in your buffet looks a little dirty, it might be best to give it a wide berth. ‌

When hash browns are freshly cooked, they're a delight: Crispy on the outside, soft and plump on the inside, and shot through with the sharpness of salt. But how long have they been sitting out at that breakfast buffet? Unfortunately, breakfast buffet hash browns tend to lose their crispness and become soggy and disappointing fast. This happens because as the potatoes cool, the starch inside them starts to release moisture. This moisture then works from the inside of the hash brown to its outer edges, dampening it.

This is made even worse by the fact that in breakfast buffets, hash browns are often piled on top of each other, meaning that any steam from the lower items has nowhere to escape, and ends up essentially steaming the potatoes. While you might get lucky with a fresh batch straight out of the kitchen, the last thing you want is valuable plate space taken up with soggy, oily potatoes. We'd recommend you get your carb fix over at the bread station instead. Most breakfast buffets have an excellent selection of fresh local bread that you can cut yourself and toast, providing you with a reliably crispy, warm slice.