Long-lasting research shows that we have more and more of what we eat and how we eat while we are with other people.
How is this happening?
How can we use this effect to stay away from sugary and fatty foods and even lose weight?
Experiments by health psychologist John de Castro in the 1980s and experiments by other scientists show that people eat more when they are in groups.
De Castro regards this phenomenon as "social facilitation" as "the most important factor that determines the influence of food to date".
When factors such as hunger, mood, distracting conversations were ignored, it was concluded that what was causing more meals with others was to spend more time at the table.
The bigger the group participating in the meal, the longer the time spent at the table. When this time limit is reached, large groups do not eat more than small groups.
Experiments have shown that long meals lead to more eating while eating with friends. The longer this time, the more likely it is that the next sweet chapter will pass.
In addition, people are ordering more food in groups, accepting from the beginning that they will not be guilty of exceeding their normal borders.
In a survey conducted in Japan, people showed that they had more pleasure in eating when someone was with them. In this experiment, people were asked to eat popcorn and some of them looked at the wall, and some looked at the same. This should be the reason why there are mirrors in many restaurants.
But when we are with us, there are not many times that we eat less. We may hear the need to control our desire to show that we are part of some social rule. With the behavior called social modeling, we need to keep up with the way people eat.
In the experiments performed, it was seen that obese children were less cared for when they were in the group than they were alone. Young people with excessive weight were eating more when there was someone in the same situation, and less when there was one in normal weight.
In college, women were found to have less calories when they had men on their tables, and more food in the group where only women were present. In the US, if the restaurateurs are getting a overweight waiter, it is seen that the customers eat more sweet.
Experiments in the UK on the restaurant wall hanging on the walls of the restaurant prefer to eat vegetables expressed that people are ordering more vegetables, exposed sugar papers were encouraged to eat chocolate.
Another study in 2014 showed that such behaviors affected the amount and modality of food being eaten. Women are paying more attention to their behavior in the environment where men are, and people are imitating more people they like. This confirms the understanding that we have adopted the behavior that we think is appropriate and we have eaten according to it.
There is not much research to explain why we are adopting a social eating attitude. Perhaps this social norm could be developed to help achieve equal food distribution in hunter and gatherer groups. Imitating other people next to meals may also have helped children avoid safe and nutritious food and poisonous food.
Suzanne Higgs, a professor of psycho-biology at Birmingham University, said:
"We can learn through trial and error, but this can lead to risky behavior and illness. It has been possible for people to survive to advanced ages by making safe choices in their meals by observing and imitating others from a young age can be, "
Today, however, ready-to-eat foods such as sugar and chips have turned our food norms upside down. If people around us eat too much and gain weight, we do not hesitate to do the same with them. In this case, we can not see it as a problem as it becomes the state of the majority of obesity.
Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, an associate professor of preventive medicine at Alabama University, says,
"When people say what normal weight should be according to the body-mass index, some people think it is a wrong norm and that criteria that can not be achieved are determined."
According to the World Health Organization, one billion people in the world, including 340 million children, are entering the obese definition.
This does not mean that we should not go out with our friends who are heavier than we are. It may only be possible to apply conscious control while eating, for example, to say no to dessert.
However, as some experts have said, if we see group food as an opportunity to feast on ourselves, then limiting ourselves may be contrary to our birth. And if it's to obey such non-natural limitations, if the healing of the human sweet of ours is ordered, it is not really so easy.