Word to describe a person who decides what to eat amongst a group of people? [closed]

the decider

The term has long been recognized and adopted in legal, management, educational, medical, computer science and several other technical fields, to signify a person or thing that is assigned the responsibility of taking decisions.

[emphasis mine:]

A study from many years ago underscored an interesting phenomenon: While the majority of car purchases were made by men, the driving influence (forgive the pun) over which car to buy was very heavily premised upon, or completely decided by, his female counterpart.

(Jared Kohn, Who’s the Decider?: Influencer Marketing in a Poor Economy, © 2013 Talent Zoo)

Decider – the person or group that actually says this is the product we want …

(Stanford: Marketing Strategy)

Pianalto directed the audience to a short video about Bernanke, which portrayed the Chairman as a leader and activist – a decider with extraordinary expertise and acumen fit for the task, a man who is bold and creative, and whose raison d’être is to design and implement solutions to fend off the ravages of the current era of deleveraging and thereby better the lives of the American people.

(Tony Crescenzi: 'Ben Bernanke: The Decider,' ©2013, PIMCO)

… and when it came to determining what should be written on their whiteboard, this person usually functioned as the Decider – the person who determined what would be written on the group's white board. Sometimes the Decider controlled this process by writing the whiteboard himself, and other times he directed some other student who was acting as Scribe for the group, what to write.

(Richard A. Lesh et al., Ed., "Modeling Students' Mathematical Modeling Competencies: ICTMA 13," p.348)

We call that person a take-charge type of person (or simply "take charge person").

To say that someone is a take-charge type of person is to say that person is willing to step up and make decisions and lead others in the absence of anyone else doing so.

The term can be used approvingly or critically. Some people exhibit this trait even among people who don't appreciate it.

Here is an example, based on the life of industrialist J. P. Morgan.

Morgan’s desire and ability to take charge was not a characteristic that developed with age; he had it from the very first day he went to work. While working as a junior accountant at Duncan, Sherman and Co., he was sent by his bosses to New Orleans to study the cotton industry. It wasn’t long before Morgan saw the potential for opportunity and profit, although it lied in the coffee business as opposed to cotton. Without any of the required authorization from his superiors, Morgan went ahead and purchased an entire shipload of coffee using a company draft. He saw the opportunity and he knew that he had to act quickly; any indecision or stalling would mean that the chance would pass him by.

I would not be surprised if his employer was not a fan of this character attribute, under the circumstances, but it certainly had positive results in the long run.

take charge adj. Informal Possessing or exhibiting strong qualities of initiative, leadership, and management: "take-charge people who are the center of all the action" (George F. Will).

Perhaps the metaphor lead dog.

Also consider

• alpha dog
• alpha male
• top dog
• top banana
• driving force
• initiator
• instigator
• point man
• spearhead
• torchbearer
• bellwether
• galvanizer