London, February 04: To attract men, women order low calorie food when dining in mixed gender groups, a new study has found.
The research suggests that young women use their food to send a signal to men. Just like clothing and accessories, they pick meals to enhance their desirability to the opposite sex.
“The salad leaves are meant to say, ‘I’m pretty; I’m attractive; I take care of myself’,” said Psychologist Meredith Young, lead researcher of the study.
For their study, the team observed the eating pattern of almost 470 undergraduates — both male and female aged between 17 and 22 years — at the canteens of McMaster University in Canada, The Guardian reported.
They found that when women shared the table with men they ate rabbit food or other meals “of significantly lower caloric value” than in all-women groups. And the pressure increases with the number of potential partners around.
As for the men, they didn’t watch what they scoffed at all, the researchers said.
In arriving at the hypothesis, the researchers made following assumptions: the undergraduates had not yet settled down, were in the market for relationships and that the majority were heterosexual.
—-PTI