Study shows that wearing a "fatsuit" makes women snack harder.

Image: Wikimedia CommonsOvereating is a growing problem. But what makes us overeat? Obviously, delicious food can be hard to resist, but that's clearly not the only factor. Here, scientists explored whether feeling overweight changes how we eat. It turns out that wearing a suit designed to make one feel obese did change participants' eating habits -- but only for women. Women, but not men, ate more snack food when wearing the fatsuits, even in private. The scientists were not able to determine why this was true, but it's true.The psychosocial experience of feeling overweight promotes increased snack food consumption in women but not men. "Self-identification of being overweight has been associated with overeating and weight gain in observational studies, irrespective of whether the individual in question is objectively overweight. The aims of the present studies were to examine whether experimentally manipulating the psychosocial experience of feeling overweight impacted on snack ...