14 DAY TRIAL // You are what you eat. You also eat by the company you keep, a new study shows, with women tending to increase the calorie intake when having dinner with a female friend and bringing it down when seated opposite a man. Similarly, the number of people seated for dinner also influences the number of calories a woman ingests during a single meal, as WebMD can confirm.
Social signaling makes women choose different types of food, depending on who they’re sitting with at the table and how many people are around, researchers have learned. From this to the conclusion that going on regular and frequent nights out with girlfriends is not actually the best idea if we’re on a diet is nothing but a small step, because women tend to indulge more when they’re with female friends, no longer feeling any restraint as to the number of calories they consume.
Oddly enough, the number of people at the same table also influences what women eat, so, when in a smaller group where a man also happens to be present, as a rule, women will have smaller portions with fewer calories. As more people are gathered for dinner, the calorie intake goes up for most ladies, but all the while depending on the number of men in the dinner party. As of now, researchers don’t have a clear explanation for why that happens, but they’re inclined to believe it has to do with social signaling and to men’s perception of a woman’s beauty depending on how slim she is – therefore on how much food she has on her plate.
“Women eating in groups of women tend to increase the calorie values of the food they choose. When it is a date situation, that’s when we see a big difference. Women in groups of women tended to increase the caloric value of the food they choose. The bigger the group of women, the more they eat.” leader of the study Meredith E. Young, PhD, a psychologist and an assistant professor in the Centre for Medical Education at McGill University in Montreal, says for the aforementioned publication.
What’s more, the difference in calories is nothing to be neglected – that is to say, a couple of dinners like this a week can truly cause serious damage to a woman’s waist. For instance, a woman on a date with a man takes in an average of 552 calories per meal, whereas when having dinner with a female friend, that number goes up to 665. If she’s eating with a large group of female friends (say, for instance, 4 of them), the calorie count can go as high up as 800 calories, the study has learned.