Be Careful Who You Eat With. Diners Copy Behavior Of Partners

Be careful who you eat with. New research conducted at the Behavioural Science Institute of the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands suggests that people who eat together eat alike, meaning they eat as quickly or as slowly as their partner. The researchers, who published their work in PLoS ONE, carefully observed 70 pairs of young women who had not previously met as they ate a meal together, watching when and how often each of the women took a bite of food. HealthDay reports that if one diner took a bite within five seconds of her partner, the researchers noted the behavior as “mimicry.” What did they find? The women did indeed mimic each other, and the mimicry went both ways. They also found that the mimicry was more pronounced during the first 20 minutes of dining together. Read more in HealthDay.