Women choose food according to the company
Calories and companies
If you are a woman and go out to dinner with a man, you probably will choose a food with fewer calories than what you choose if you were dining with another woman.
The study, which shows that women count calories when they're with a man, but not when they are with other women, was published in the international journal Appetite.
Meredith Young, McMaster University Canada, found that what a woman chooses to eat at lunch or join the company and is influenced by the amount of men and women in the group.
Calories versus men
The researcher found that women who eat in the company of men choose foods with a caloric value significantly lower than women who were observed eating in the company of another or other women.
More than that, when women are in a group of men and women their choice of food goes to the indicator's lowest level of calories, the more men are in the group, fewer calories will have the food she will choose.
When these same women eat in groups formed by women only, their food is significantly more calories.
Food & atraência
Young says it had been surprised by the findings. The food industry focuses on consumer products and ads typically show thin models instead of female models with weight or overweight.
Thus, food choices seem to be made considering how others will look for them. In other words, healthy portions are seen as more feminine, and women seem to believe that, if they eat less, are considered more attractive by men.
"It is possible that small portions of food to flag attraction, and women, consciously or unconsciously, are content with smaller portions to be seen as more attractive," says Young.
Regarding the choice of food by men, research has shown that they are not substantially affected by the number nor the sex of their companies.
Source: Journal of Health
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