I was buffing a friends island and as I was putting a steak sandwich on his Deerstalker I had the thought, Is this actually worthwhile doing?
I mean... the steak buff consumes meat and then you use it to make back more meat - is that worth while ? Is it economical ?
So I did what any intelligent adult would do and asked my kid to work it out for me.
It turns out that Yes it is worth while doing, at any level, except level 1, even if you self buff you are still going to generate more meat back than you use to create the buff.
So then we asked, Is it better to perhaps use a Feast rather than a Steak Sandwich - since you use less meat to make this buff.
The answer was, no not really.
If you take into account that you need to have a butcher to make the sausages, and that you will no doubt have that buffed, then the cost of the meat involved, and the down time that will occur between buffing.... the best best is to just stay with the steaks.
We found that the real gain in making meat isn't to do with buffing however.
It is to do with what buildings you use to make your meat.
Unlike coal and fish production the special building for creating meat (Deerstalker) does NOT have the same production time as its licensed counterpart. The Deerstalker is 8 mins while the Hunter is 6 mins.
This represents approximately 10 more meat per hour per building unbuffed.
Over the duration of one steak buff applied by a premium friend it works out that you will get about 900 more meat from a lvl 6 Hunter than you will from a lvl 6 Deerstalker. I have 8 Deerstalkers so if i was to replace them with Hunters I could gain 7k per meat per buffing - which is a significant amount.
Obviously license issues need to be considered.
I hope this helps you plan your islands.