In 1908, an unpublished investigation by the French government discovered a number of commercial kitchens that violated the 1903 law regarding hygiene and security in the workplace. A linear-probability model shows that restaurants in tourist neighborhoods were 12 percentage points more likely to transgress sanitary regulations than those in non-tourist areas. Many of the kitchens in the expensive restaurants of central Paris were in basements where they lacked fresh air, sunlight, and efficient waste evacuation. Clientele also mattered as a determinant of insalubrity. Local repeat customers whose loyalty depended on constant restaurant standards tended to exert more pressure on sanitation than did tourists who based their choices on culinary reputation, such as recommendations in Baedeker’s travel guide.

Analysis of the account books of the convent school of Saint-Cyr between 1688 and 1788 reveals the causes of the institution's changing patterns of meat consumption. Although a rational-choice model can explain short-term variations in the school's diet, economic variables alone are not sufficient to explain its long-term variations, as evolving tastes began to infiltrate Saint-Cyr's traditional, aristocratic diet. The unintended side effect of this development was to improve nutrition, which the school managed to do without running afoul of claims to elite status.