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Diners Tend To Eat More If Their Companions Are Overweight
BarbaraHudson writes: A University of Illinois study (abstract) that shows that people tend to eat more in the presence of an overweight person. From the article: "The test involved a sample of 82 college coeds who were observed helping themselves to a simple pasta and salad meal. Each of the coeds were themselves of normal weight. The students first required to watch what they believed was a fat woman serving herself some of the food. The fat woman was actually an actress wearing a fat suit.
After observing the "corpulent" woman serve herself, the students were allowed to come forward and serve themselves pasta and salad. On average, the coeds each served themselves more pasta than the "fat" woman had selected while taking less salad than she did. When the same study was performed with the actress appearing sans the fat suit, researchers observed that students ended up eating more salad than pasta. The conclusion was simple: people may consume more unhealthy food and eat less healthy food when in the presence of an overweight person." As anyone on a diet will tell you, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Weight control is a lot more complex than the article makes it seem, though some will welcome the opportunity to blame someone else.
After observing the "corpulent" woman serve herself, the students were allowed to come forward and serve themselves pasta and salad. On average, the coeds each served themselves more pasta than the "fat" woman had selected while taking less salad than she did. When the same study was performed with the actress appearing sans the fat suit, researchers observed that students ended up eating more salad than pasta. The conclusion was simple: people may consume more unhealthy food and eat less healthy food when in the presence of an overweight person." As anyone on a diet will tell you, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Weight control is a lot more complex than the article makes it seem, though some will welcome the opportunity to blame someone else.
The "low-fat" craze that caused everyone to start eating a lot more sugar and spiking their insulin constantly.
As opposed to where the OP wants the blame placed.
This isn't "blaming" anyone. At no point was any "blame" made. At no point in the study did they ask the guys "Why did you eat so much pasta?" and at no point did anyone say "The fat lady made me do it."
This is nothing more than observed behaviour. Most of this type of behaviour is subconscious, so in many ways you probably have had a fat person grab your hand and shovel food down your throat.
This may also explain why the only person looking to lay blame on anyone appears to be you.
Or maybe simply observing behaviour does not immediately mean we need to do something about the behaviour.
Studies involving a small (82), biased (coeds) number of college students who were primed (required to watch) are not science. "The conclusion was simple". As is anyone believing said conclusion.
Yet another case of a prior conclusion being reached by a fabricated "study". Groundwork for controlling people's diets.
Doritos happened.
In all seriousness, when I was a kid growing up in the '70s and '80s, Doritos were like the most awesome thing ever, and I loved those things. Doritos, Oreos, Pringles and Fritos were my favorite pleasures on earth.
Two things have changed since then. First, I bet if I could go back in time and look at that "big" bag of Doritos I used to savor for a month or something, it was probably only a little bigger than a modern "big grab" bag, if not the same size. Second, I only got to eat any of the above foods once in a rare while, because they were "too expensive" to keep on hand. My staple diet growing up was home cooking from either my aunt or my mother.
We all need more home cooking, and less junk. Junk has its place, but too many of us make a staple diet of it, and I'm pretty close to being as bad for this as you can get. Some weeks I literally live on Doritos and Dr. Pepper and never have a real meal at all. Imagine, if you will, how it could possibly have come to pass that I am overweight, and about to turn obese. It helps nothing that I earn money by putting my ass in a seat and doing very little physical activity.
Unless you're a porn star or an athlete, there's just no money in physical activity.
Aspartame is one of the few substances that has been analysed to death, and we know it is quickly metabolised into 3 parts that are also found in many other sources of food that we wouldn't think twice of consuming. We don't know nearly as much about herbal teas, for instance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.... no matter how hard you try to make Aspartame look more innocent than bunny rabbits and fluffy kittens It still creeps me out that Donald Rumsfeld had a hand in getting it FDA approved and bringing it to market.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Your post is an amalgamation of unfalsifiable nonsense. Humans aren't dogs; we didn't typically immediately eat everything we killed. They took it back to the cave/shelter/whatever and (once we had fire) cooked it and shared it with the non-hunters. Yeah the tribal leader(s) probably got to eat more or better parts of the animal, but, unlike with dogs, robbing him of this by eating it first would probably result in some long-term consequences. And for a large part of our history -- maybe most of it -- we weren't even primarily hunters at all. Look at the modern diet of chimpanzees. Your speculation also does not account for eating less salad -- why not simply eat more of everything? And as far as eating quicker, that's not even in the summary (and probably not the article either, but I don't care enough to check). You seem to have just pulled that out of an orifice not used for eating.
My speculation is It's probably more a case of mirroring. People mirror those around them (and you can speculate on why exactly this is the case as well if you want), and mirroring a fat person means -- at least in someone's mind -- eating less healthy and more calorie-dense food. But that's just unfalsifiable speculation on my part. All we know for sure is that people do it. And that's thanks to this study.
Also? Not going to a university because you don't like one study by one professor in one department is just too stupid for further comment.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.