Parents are acutely aware of the influence that friends exert over their children's behavior -- how they dress, how they wear their hair, whether they drink or smoke. And now a new laboratory-based study has shown that friends may also influence how much adolescents eat.

The study appears online in the current issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine and involved 54 overweight and non-overweight youth -- 24 boys and 30 girls -- between the ages of 9 and 11.  Each was assigned randomly to bring a friend or to be paired with an unfamiliar peer. Study
participants worked on a computer game to earn points exchangeable for food or time to spend with their friend or with an unfamiliar peer.

"The task got increasingly harder and the food and social points became more difficult to earn as a way to measure how hard youth were willing to work for food or for play time with their friend or with an unfamiliar peer," lead author Sarah-Jeanne Salvy notes.

In the study, participants matched with an unfamiliar peer showed that when working for food became difficult, they switched to earn time with the unfamiliar peer, and when working for peer activity became harder, they switched to earn food. However, participants assigned to the
friend condition continued to work for time with their friends instead of working for food.

"Our findings underscore the importance of considering the child's social network in studying youth's motivation to eat," says Salvy. "Previous attempts to find substitutes for food and eating have not been very successful. To our knowledge, no research has studied whether social interactions can be a substitute for food in children."
   
"Peer rejection and ostracism are obvious costs imposed on social interactions," says Salvy.  "Even the unavailability of one's peers or friends can limit youth's access to social settings and situations. As a result, children may choose to engage in eating and sedentary activities when social alternatives are unavailable.

"There is emerging evidence that a youth's social network may be uniquely relevant and influential to eating behavior and choice of activities," she continues. "Individuals are influenced by the eating and activity norms set by those around them, and the results of the present study suggest that friendship can provide an alternative to eating."

Citation: Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, Lauren A. Nitecki, Leonard H. Epstein, 'Do Social Activities Substitute for Food in Youth?', Annals of Behavioral Medicine, January 2010; doi: 10.1007/s12160-009-9145-0