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In the August issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition researchers at the University of Buffalo published a study that suggests that the company you keep can greatly influence your eating habits.

Basically the study found when overweight kids are around lean friends they consume less calories than when they are spending time with other overweight friends. Both obese and normal-weight children between the ages of 9 and 15 were paired together. Each pair spent 45 minutes in a room that contained games, puzzles, healthy snacks, and junk food. The kids where allowed to do and eat whatever they wanted for 45 minutes while they were monitored with cameras.

The result is not a big surprise. Sarah-Jeanne Salvy summed it up like this, “Being friends increased food intake, being overweight and eating with an overweight [person] increased eating, and when you combined those, the overweight friends were eating about 700 calories.”

However, overweight youngsters have enough social problems to deal with, parents are not encouraged to isolate their children from other children. Instead, a diversity of friends is always a better influence to help encourage a variety of behaviors.

via Newsweek.com

Of course, we would venture to say that these findings aren’t isolated to our children. The company you keep will always influence who you are as well as what you eat. Sometimes a lifestyle change is not just inwardly focused, you might have some outside factors to deal with as well.