People eat more when they eat with friends or family, says study

New Delhi : If you want to eat more, then dining with friends and family would be a better choice, said a new study.

Earlier studies revealed that people who dine in with others ate 48% more food than the ones who ate alone. Also, they revealed obese women eating socially up to 29% more than eating alone.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that eating socially gave a positive boost to the total amount of food intake in comparison to eating alone, the conclusion was drawn after the evaluation of 43 different studies on the same topic.

The results have been published in the 'American Journal of Clinicla Nutrition'.

"We found strong evidence that people eat more food when dining with friends and family than when alone. However, this social facilitation effect on eating was not observed across studies that had looked at food intake amongst people who were not well acquainted," said Dr Helen Ruddock, research leader from the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham.

"People want to convey positive impressions to strangers. Selecting small portions may provide a means of doing so and this may be why the social facilitation of eating is less pronounced amongst groups of strangers," continued Dr Ruddock.

"Findings from previous research suggest that we often choose what (and how much) to eat based on the type of impression that we want to convey about ourselves. Evidence suggests that this may be particularly pronounced for women eating with men they wish to impress and for people with obesity who wish to avoid being judged for overeating," said Dr Ruddock.