Eating a meal in the presence of an overweight person can make you eat more

They say you are what you eat but now researchers have found who you eat with could also be making you fat.
New research has found eating a meal in the presence of an overweight person can raise the amount of unhealthy food you eat.
The Southern Illinois University study published in the journal Apetite took 82 normal weight university students and studied what happened when they selected food and ate it in the presence of an overweight person.
A professional actress was dressed in a fatsuit and served herself pasta and salad for lunch.
After observing her the students were asked to serve themselves some of the same food.
Both male and female students served and ate a larger amount of pasta when the actress wore the fatsuit than when she didn’t.

Overeating ... Students ate more when they dined with an overweight person. Pic: Thinkstock Source: Supplied

Overweight ... Most diets don’t produce long term weight loss. Pic: Thinkstock Source: Supplied

Even when the actress dressed in the fatsuit and ate more salad and less pasta the students ate less salad when she was wearing the suit than when she was not.
“These results demonstrated that people may eat larger portions of unhealthy food and smaller portions of healthy food when eating with an overweight person, probably because the health commitment goal is less activated,” the researchers say.
Previous studies have found kids ate more when they were with a friend than a stranger and up to 300 calories more when they were with an overweight friend.
A person’s chance of becoming obese increased 37 per cent if their partner had become obese.
Another study found when a woman is with a man she’ll eat about 100 calories less than when she dines with a female companion.
Professor John Dixon the head of clinical obesity research at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute says while the research is interesting we “should be suspicious of short term observations of how people eat”.

Partners in crime ... Your chance of becoming obese increases if your partner is obese. Picture Thinkstock Source: News Limited

The body has a complex system of regulating food intake and weight that means over time our weight stays almost the same even if we change what we eat from day to day.
This is why most diets don’t produce long term weight loss, he says.
He says at obesity conferences discussion of obesity can have the opposite effect on people to that found in the fatsuit study, and that conference participants usually eat a very lean lunch after talking about weight.
“If you have a lot of fat and refined carbohydrates you will eat energy dense food and put on weight,” he said.
“When you eat less fat and more protein and complex carbohydrates your body will come to a different set (weight) point.’’
However, this lifestyle effect is only every likely to produce a 2-5 per cent weight loss in the long term.
This does not mean we should not try to eat a healthy diet because eating healthy food and exercising is good for our health, he says
“Its better to be fit and fat than lean and unfit,” he said.
“The problem is we’re obsessed with weight. The first thing people look at is the scales but they are looking at the wrong markers for success.”