Originally Posted by
IAH-OIL-TRASH
May not be true - the FA I talked to Sunday said certain pre-order choices are only loaded in the numbers pre-ordered. Once the pre-order widow is closed, a subset of the pre-order choices (2 or 3) is used to fill out the cart for the remaining seats. That's why, on board, 5 choices aren't presented to people who haven't pre-ordered - it's restricted to the 2 or 3 "cart fillers".
It's not at all clear to me that a FA would know this, and the existence of such a system would not be inferrable simply from the numbers of various meals loaded on the plane.