"Everyone else is still eating"

Some of the biggest extras happen in company. Sunday lunch runs to two hours. The curry arrives for six and there are dishes all over the table. Your aunt has made three puddings and would like you to try each one. You stopped being hungry some time ago. But everyone is still picking, the conversation is good, and sitting there with an empty plate feels like leaving the party.

The research confirms what you'd guess. A review of 42 studies found strong evidence that people eat more when they eat with friends or family than when they eat alone. The effect was sizeable. It didn't appear when people ate with strangers. So it isn't the mere presence of other people that does it. It's the ease and the length of a meal among people you like. In the few studies that looked into why, longer meals were part of the explanation. The food stays in front of you for longer, and chapter 6 explained what food in front of you does.

I don't want to treat this as a problem to be got rid of. Eating with people you love is one of the best things there is, and a long lunch is a pleasure in itself. The authors of the review suggest the habit may be very old and may have served a purpose. If the price of your sister's birthday dinner is that you eat more than you need, it's a fair price, and chapter 12 has a name for meals like that.

The trouble is the ordinary shared meal, the one that isn't an occasion, where the extra comes along just because the table was sociable. What you want there is the company without the third helping. A few things help, and none of them needs an announcement.

Eat slowly, since you've got the time. If the meal is going to last two hours, there's no reason to clear your first plate in ten minutes and then face a table of food with nothing to do.

When you've had enough, keep something in front of you that isn't food. A glass of water, a coffee or a cup of tea all do the job, so that your hands have something to do and nobody sees you sitting with nothing.

If the dishes are within reach, shift them down the table, or offer to clear the ones that are finished with. The picking that happens in the second hour is almost all reach.

Then there's the host who presses. "Go on, there's plenty. You've hardly had anything." This comes from love, or from the old rule that a good host keeps offering and a good guest gives in. Refusing can feel rude. It helps to remember what the host wants, which is to know that the food was good and that you're happy. You can give them that directly. "That was lovely, I couldn't manage another thing. Could I take a piece home?" Praise and a request for leftovers please most hosts more than a reluctant third helping would. If they insist, a small spoonful that you take your time over will do.

The family rule is harder when it's still running in your own head. If you were raised to clear your plate in company, leaving food at your mother's table may feel like defiance at fifty. You don't have to make a stand. Serve yourself less to begin with, if you're allowed near the spoon, and the plate can be cleared honestly.