Social Factors and Eating Behavior

In recent years a large proportion of the research on the eating behaviour has been focused on the effect which social factors have on the individual. The scenario of Esma has been use to investigate the way which social factors affect the eating habit. Esma is a normal body weight female who is in a restaurant having a dinner party with twelve people and many different meals are served across the evening, there are two things which we are trying to predict out of this scenario. Firstly how much will Esma eat compare to other people and will it be different than when eating alone, secondly if Esma has very low levels of trait empathy, will she eat differently than the first predictions. This essay attempt to investigate and predict the effect social factors have on the eating habit by analysing the evidence provided by numerous research studies.

Several studies in the recent years have demonstrate that eating behaviour can be influence by many factors and social factors is long believe to be the major influence on the drives of individual. The social influence on meal eaten with other people is independent to the situations, location, meal time, snacks or alcohol (De Castro, 1990). The correlation between factors such as the variety of food available, the number of people and the relationship between people are just three of the many social factors which has been proven to have strong and noticeable effect on the food consume. First of all we will start by looking at the effect which varieties of food available will have on the eating habit of individual. It is commonly know that much of our eating habit is largely affect by the appearance, smell and the taste of food. Therefore by increasing the variety available, it will encour...

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