View this email in your browser

By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #113: The relationship between time spent eating and BMI

Find all previously published facts here
Read my new MedPage Today article, co-authored with Dr. Vanita Rahman, on how restaurants contribute to obesity

Studies show that as time devoted to eating declines, body mass index increases. Thus it’s not surprising that among the 34 developed nations in the OECD, the United States has the highest obesity rate and its people devote the least amount of time to eating and drinking each day (61 minutes). Conversely, the residents of the two OECD countries that devote the most time to eating (France: 131 minutes; Italy: 125 minutes) are the least likely to be overweight among any European nation. Communal eating has been put forward as a remedy because, as one writer has observed, “social habits restrict the pace at which people can eat and the quantity that they can help themselves to. . . . It is difficult to eat rapaciously if you are making an earnest effort to participate in a conversation.”