You can learn a lot about who loves you by walking around with food on your face.
Should you tell someone when they have food on their face? You will embarrass them but you will spare them embarrassment later. The embarrassment comes from common knowledge. He knows that you know, etc. that he had food on his face. You would escape this if you could alert him about the food without him knowing it was you.
You could wait and expect that the food will fall. But you run the risk that it won’t and he’ll discover the food and realize that you let him walk around with food on his face. And once you wait for a bit you are committed. You can’t very well tell him after the meal is over. “You mean you sat there talking to me the whole time with sauce on my chin?”
And what happens when you are in a group and one guy has food on his face? Whose going to tell? Whoever is the first to talk proves that everyone else was willing to ignore it.
Bottom line: if you are dining with me and I have food on my face, send me a text message.
Cheap Talk 
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May 28, 2010 at 10:58 am
Dan Garrett
This seems like it can be quite important “economically”, since questions of face saving probably underlie a lot of bad decision making. For instance, it is hard to correct your supervisor (or client) because that has similar implications to the “food on your face” concern. Again, you might try to find a way to allow your supervisor to find out he is wrong without him knowing that you know.
The question about how best to let someone know is quite subtle, though. If I send you a text, then you will know that I know you will feel embarrassed. If that knowledge itself makes you feel more embarrassed, I may be better to tell you directly. You then infer I am a level 1 thinker, or that I simply don’t think “food on the face” is embarrassing.