Quick Natural Slimming – Clarified

Our friendships can have quite an influence on how we live our lives. There's a tangible link between the way we behave and the men and women we have friendships with. And yet we're likely to have presumed this commonality concerned our likes and dislikes - for example we enjoy the same musical tastes as our friends, or hold similar political views.

Lately though, studies are claiming that we will have more tendency to be overweight if we hang around with others who are overweight. According to a recent news article, we have a tendency to consume more when eating with heavier people who we know well. A US research team looked at kids eating habits. They found that the heavier ones ate more when they were with their heavier pals than when they were with their slimmer friends.

Everyone in the group actually devoured more when they were in the company of friends, regardless of their size. But pairing up overweight friends led to the biggest consumption of all. The study was undertaken by researchers from the State University of New York at Buffalo. It highlighted the role friends play in influencing how much youngsters eat.

Certainly, it's human nature to feel more secure in our actions when we're amongst friends. We're not so self-aware with people we like and know well. But there's possibly more to it than that - we intuitively view friends as permission givers. We grant them the right to define acceptability - in this case in relation to food quantities.

The study took 65 young people of mixed weights and observed them for 45 minutes. There were pairs of friends, and pairs of strangers. They were given games to entertain themselves, along with snack food, fruit and veg.

All the ones who teamed up with a friend ate a larger amount than the rest. However it was the pairs who were both overweight who consumed the most in total. And the variations were considerable, as shown below.

The overweight pals who were paired up ate 738 calories each on average. And yet 300 cals less were consumed by the larger guys when they teamed up with a pal of normal weight. Interestingly the normal weight guys stabilized at around 500 cals irrespective of what their pal's weight was. Comparable evidence of strong influence from friends is evident in attitudes to alcohol consumption by teens.

A child's social network then is significant in determining their eating habits. What this means is kids can be influenced to eat less as well as more. Hence the necessity to educate the young.

(C) Scott Edwards. Go to WeightLossDietWar.com for quality advice on slimming beauty and health weight management.