On one occasion I had to explicitly explain to a friend that, for her purposes, it was best to assume that the last piece of chicken was simply unavailable to be eaten, ever, by anyone
Thinking about how this works in my household, I realized why this doesn’t come up: if there is a last piece of chicken then the host has made a mistake. In my culture there should always be enough food that everyone feels comfortable to eat as much as they would enjoy without worrying that this will limit other’s consumption. The host cooks sufficient food to ensure this, with the expectation that there will be leftovers. And then leftovers provide lunches, and occasionally dinners if they accumulate sufficiently. Of course this requires being rich enough to have enough food for everyone to have what they want, but (a) food is much cheaper relative to the rest of life than it used to be and (b) if the cost would be an issue you deal with this by having larger quantities of cheaper food.
In the rare occasions when the host miscalculates, because extra people showed up, people ate more than expected, or something else, my culture’s general askiness means we talk about it pretty explicitly (“who else would like more chicken?”) and generally divide what’s left equally among everyone who wants it.
Thinking about how this works in my household, I realized why this doesn’t come up: if there is a last piece of chicken then the host has made a mistake. In my culture there should always be enough food that everyone feels comfortable to eat as much as they would enjoy without worrying that this will limit other’s consumption. The host cooks sufficient food to ensure this, with the expectation that there will be leftovers. And then leftovers provide lunches, and occasionally dinners if they accumulate sufficiently. Of course this requires being rich enough to have enough food for everyone to have what they want, but (a) food is much cheaper relative to the rest of life than it used to be and (b) if the cost would be an issue you deal with this by having larger quantities of cheaper food.
In the rare occasions when the host miscalculates, because extra people showed up, people ate more than expected, or something else, my culture’s general askiness means we talk about it pretty explicitly (“who else would like more chicken?”) and generally divide what’s left equally among everyone who wants it.