A new study has found that dining with an overweight person may cause you to eat more unhealthy foods. This is according to a study that was published in the journal Appetite.

This study was conducted at Cornell University in New York, where researchers found that college students were more likely to serve themselves more pasta and less salad when the person they were eating with was wearing a “fat-suit”.

Professor Mitsuru Shimizu led the study and with his co-authors, theorized that the presence of the over weight person derailed the students’ intentions to eat healthy. The researchers selected 82 university students: half of them ate in the presence of a woman in a prosthetic “fat-suit” and the other half ate with a woman with no body alterations.

The researchers saw that the group who ate in the presence of the woman in the prosthesis served themselves 31% more pasta and 43% less of salad. This was observed when the woman who wore the prosthesis served herself more salad than pasta.

This brings an important factor that could be contributing to the overweight problem. This is an often overlooked factor but it bring awareness that we should be consistent in our portion sizes no matter who’s around to influence our choices in our eating habits.

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