Study: Men Tend to Overeat in Front of Women in Order to Impress Them

(Photo: Kasey-Samuel Adams)

If a man goes out with his guy friends to an all-you-can-eat buffet, he'll eat to satiate his hunger. But if he's with a woman that he's trying to impress, then he's likely to overeat as a way to demonstrate his virility.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab and published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology Science. A press release from the university explains:

Men who dined with at least one woman ate 92% more pizza and 86% more salad than men who dined with only other men. The amount that women ate didn’t differ when eating with other women or with men. When they ate with men, many women indicated feeling that they overate and were rushed through their meal.

 “These findings suggest that men tend to overeat to show off – you can also see this tendency in eating competitions which almost always have mostly male participants,” explains lead author Kevin Kniffin, PhD, of Cornell University.  The study was conducted by Kniffin, Ozge Sigirci, a former visiting scholar at the Cornell University Food, and Brand Lab and Brian Wansink, professor and director of the Food and Brand Lab.

Well, guys, now you know what it takes to get the ladies interested. Get to it.

-via Jonah Goldberg