What Enhances Food Intake? – Silent Eating or Conversing while Eating with Others

Abstract

The social facilitation of public dining is important for healthy development. Unfortunately, this practice was, for many, temporarily interrupted by COVID-19. In this crossover study, we posit that two conditions—silent eating versus conversing while eating with cafeteria situation affects consumption and taste. In all, 11 students at a university in Japan served 10 g of popcorn each during a 90-s interval under these two conditions. The main outcome measures were consumption, the scores for which were significantly higher when eating with conversation. The results indicated that ambience and friendship affected eating rates are important for food consumption. This paper’s result suggested the importance of eating with others. We need to conduct additional experiments in the future. However, this paper is necessary for future developments