Dine out with fatty pals to stay thin: Study
POSTED September 24, 2009 - 16:30 | POSTED BY Kangna Agarwal
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on September 24, 2009 - 18:12
The authors of the report titled “I’ll have what she is having”, believe that people tend to adjust their behavior and eat less depending on the size of the person they are with.
They also found that dining with a thin person with larger appetite could make other people eat more portions than they normally do.
200 college students studied
To test this theory, the researchers focused on more than 200 college students who were not told the purpose behind the study and instead were told that the research was into people’s taste in films.
They were made to eat snacks with either a skinny or a heavy researcher while watching a movie.
One of the researchers, a young woman weighing around 112 pounds met up with all the students one at a time. For some students, she wore a fat suit which made her look few more pounds heavier.
Each time, she ordered a small or large portion of the meal and the volunteer was also offered the same, both in terms of the snack and the portion size.
Consumption of meals depended on the size of the dining partner
The findings of the study suggested that the choices made by the volunteers heavily depended on what portion size the researcher was having.
Most of the participants took the same portion size of meal similar to what the researcher had ordered. However, what amount they actually consumed depended on the size of the person they were dining at the moment.
The study found that if a thin person ordered a large portion of meal, their dining partner would also order the same portion and finish it all.
However, if an obese person ordered a large portion, so would their dining partner, except that they would be less likely to finish their meal.
“Most participants took a portion similar to what the researcher served herself,” said Brent McFerran, assistant professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia, Canada, one of the lead authors of the study.
“However, it is clear that … how much they ate, depended on whether their companion was thin or obese," he added.
The study that was carried out by the researchers based at Duke, the University of British Columbia and Arizona State University appears in the Journal of Consumer Research.
