How well do you remember the dinners you enjoyed with your friends, the ones where you left feeling as if you had eaten more than you could manage? Or in the opposite direction, the meals where you didn’t order a pudding, because nobody else did?

Perhaps you can blame social cues for eating too much or too little. Several decades of research shows that we eat more in company, and we follow what and how others eat.

But how exactly do our companions affect what we eat, and can we tap into these social influences to cut down on fats and sugar, and even lose weight?

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