Well. I love these kinds of stats -- honestly I find them fascinating, and there is usually some core of truth in them -- it's just that it might not be what we think.
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16% of obese diners sat at a booth rather than a table compared to 38% of normal weight diners.
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and
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Overweight diners sat an average of 16 feet closer than normal-weight diners.
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1 - I sit where I am most comfortable. In some restaurants that's a booth IF the tables are adjustable. If they're not then I can't fit in them (well can now but couldn't before) so sat in chairs. But I won't sit on a regular chair if a booth is an option for comfort reasons. So without considering something like the size/adjustability of the booths in question, I'm not sure that stat means much. I've never been to a chinese buffet that had adjustable booth tables with lots of room in them. They are cheap, by nature.
And the placement of chairs vs. booths might have a lot to do with both the "booth" and the "distance" issue. Booths are normally around the outside of the room, with chairs in the middle, around a buffet in the very middle or one side of the middle. So reasonably, if they don't fit as well in booths, they will both sit in chairs AND be sitting closer to the food.
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71% of normal-weight diners browsed the buffet before serving themselves compared to 33% of obese diners.
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2 - Fat people know they're fat, and in my case and my observation, they do not like to be in front of other people, and they especially do not like to be "visible and obvious" in a situation involving food, and the buffet in these places is usually the focal point of the room. It doesn't matter if I've never seen a buffet before in my life, I will not walk around it browsing like a walmart shopper, I will get a plate, get some food and promptly go sit down again. So I don't think that stat means much either.
My point being that these stats probably do MEAN something, but they mean, "The person is obese," like, no-shit-sherlock. I don't consider those contributors to obesity, only side-effects of it.
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27% of normal-weight patrons faced the buffet compared to 42% of obese diners.
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I will not sit with my back to an open room unless I have no choice at all -- prefer my back to a wall. This is probably paranoia borne of my childhood, but even aside from that part of it, I feel very conspicuous about "The back of me is gigantic" -- I prefer to face the main of the room. I don't think it's unusual that fat people may feel -- even subconsciously, without thinking about it -- slightly more embarrassed about "showing their backside" to people especially in a food (sparks awareness of the obesity) environ.
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24% of normal-weight people used chopsticks compared with 9% of overweight people.
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I like that one. Here's an irony, I used to LOVE chopsticks and had all kinds of artsy pairs of them. That was when eating was just something fun for me. When I became fat, my psychological association with eating was not really "casually fun" anymore. It's a few extremes I think, but it's not like it used to be.
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"When food is more convenient people tend to eat more," say coauthor Collin R. Payne, New Mexico State University.
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Sure, especially if they're eating carbs, sugar, and MSG heh.
If I go to a buffet, I eat a lot more than I eat at home. Buffets by nature tend to spark the "get a lot of food for your money" and "if you hardly eat you kinda wasted the money" psychology in me.
And here's the reality: buffet food sucks compared to quality dining food. People don't go to buffets because it's gourmet, they go there because it's fairly tasty and you can eat a bunch of it. That's the whole point in a way.
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"These seemingly subtle differences in behavior and environment may cause people to overeat without even realizing it."
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Yes, especially sitting in a chair instead of a booth. That just packs on the pounds man.