New York, Nov 18 (IANS): All men please take note! If you want to lose weight, check whether you are binging on food, especially when dining with a woman as you try to impress upon her!
According to an interesting research, how much you eat may have more to do with the gender of your dining companions than your appetite.
The researchers from Cornell University found that men will eat significantly more food in the company of women than they will with other men.
"The findings suggest that men tend to overeat to show off. You can also see this tendency in eating competitions which almost always have mostly male participants,” explained lead author Kevin Kniffin.
To reach this conclusion, researchers observed 105 adults lunching at an Italian buffet over the course of two weeks.
They recorded the number of pizza slices and how many bowls of salad each diner ate. The gender of each diner's eating partner or partners was also noted.
Men who dined with at least one woman ate 93 percent more pizza and 86 percent more salad than men who dined with only other men.
The quantity that women ate didn't differ when eating with other women or with men.
When they ate with men, many women indicated feeling that they overate and were rushed through their meal.
The study was conducted by Kniffin, Ozge Sigirci, former visiting scholar at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab and Brian Wansink, professor and director of the Food and Brand Lab.
The findings were published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.