LONDON: If you are planning to cut down on your daily food intake to get into shape, better dine alone as new research has found that people tend to eat more with friends and family.

Eating “socially” has a powerful effect on increasing food intake relative to dining alone, said the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“We found strong evidence that people eat more food when dining with friends and family than when alone,” said research leader Helen Ruddock from the University of Birmingham in Britain.

Previous studies found that eating with others ate up to 48 percent more food than solo diners and women with obesity eating socially consumed up to 29 percent more than when eating alone.

For the study, the researchers evaluated 42 existing studies of research into social dining.

(Agencies)