Do you want a little more?

Education and consideration with dinner companions could play a role in the weight gain What happens in the holiday season, suggests a new study.

When people choose snacks and others foods for themselves or for another person, their options are different when the other person has an average weight than when they are overweight, the researchers found.
 

Do you want a little more?

In one experiment, the participants chose to eat crackers of wheat or cookies with nuggets of chocolates for themselves and for a woman they had just met. In some cases, the woman had a normal weight (with a size of zero or two). At other times, he wore a body suit that looked increase your weight at almost 65 pounds (29 kilos), bringing it closer to a size 16.

Almost 60% of the participants chose the same snack for themselves and for the woman when it seemed that she was overweight. This happened about 30 percent of the time when the woman had her normal weight.

"What the results show is that people choose the same snack to avoid offending someone they perceive to have overweight" , he said in a press release from the Duke University the co-leader of the study, Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing at the College of Business of the university.

"This means that people could choose less healthy options for themselves and others in the holiday season if they think not doing so would offend someone," he said.

In additional experiments, participants told researchers that they thought it would be offensive to give an overweight person a healthy food and then take the unhealthy food for themselves, said the study's co-leader, Peggy Liu , Ph.D. student in marketing. Similarly, they pointed out that it would be offensive to give an overweight person the unhealthy food and then take healthy food for themselves.

"This suggests that if you head back to the buffet to pick up a piece of pumpkin pie for your fat uncle, perhaps you also cut a larger than normal piece for yourself so as not to offend him," Liu said in the press release. .

The study appears in the November issue of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.


Video Medicine: The Milk Carton Kids - I Still Want A Little More - Audiotree Live (March 2024).