Diet fact: women’s eat portions depend on with whom they have meals

If you are on diet program, it's better to find 'eating partner' who doesn't have huge appetite. Why? Well, according to a research, a person especially a woman tends to follow people's diet. Especially from whom they ask to accompany them when they are eating.

This tendency is called behavioral mimicry, or spontaneous behavior to mimic people's eating habit. For example, when two people are eating together, one of them tends to follow the other's eating speed even his/her eating portion.

RCJ Hermans, a scientist from Radboud University Nijmegen in Netherlands revealed that when he was doing research to 70 couples of volunteers. All volunteers, which were involved, are women and they didn't know each other before.

With his team, Hermans observed speed and number of bites or sop that were done by each couple where they were eating together. The result showed that there was a strong tendency from each couple to mimic eating habit of each other's.

According to Hermans, this tendency generally are not realized. Naturally, this behavior is one way that people do to be socially connected with others in near environment, but they don't realize that.

"Our research result showed mimicry tendency were happening mostly at the first 20 minutes when the couple were interacting on the dining table," other scientists from Duke University, Dr. Rick Hoyle, who was involved on the research, said as quoted by Healthday.

Some research that were done before indeed showed that there are many things people don't realize, but those things influence their eating habits. For instance, plate color, tablecloth color, the size of spoon and fork or the gender of people who eat with them.