Okay guys, at the risk of being called sexist this one’s for you. If you are tired of hearing “Oh, I thought we were just friends.” after the third date, I may be able to help.

I recently attended the American Psychological Society (APS) convention in Washington D.C., and a poster presentation caught my eye. It seems that Sara Robillard and Josee Jarry from the Eating Disorders and Anxiety Research Group (EDARG) at the University of Windsor in Canada decided to do a followup on Abed’s seminal theory of sexual competition affecting eating behavior in women (Abed, 1998). Namely, they wanted to see if single women would differ from women who are in a committed relationship when it came to how much they ate while considering who they would choose for a long-term relationship.

How’d they do it? They counted how many M&M’s the women ate while looking at profiles that were “desirable” and “undesirable.” Their findings supported the thesis that the amount that women in a relationship eat would change less based on male desirability than that of single women. This makes intuitive sense, since these women have to some extent already achieved the sexual “goal” of finding a “mate.”

However, equally interesting for frustrated daters may be the incidental fact that single women eat LESS when they are exposed to a DESIRABLE male. Although these results were based on an a priori coding of male profiles (i.e., the group comparisons were based on the experimenters’ coding of male profiles as desirable or undesirable based on theoretically important traits such as income and interest in family), it is consistent with sexual competition eating theory that the more attractive a woman finds a potential suitor, the less she will eat in his presence.

So, if you’re not sure if she’s “in to you” at the end of your first date, you might do worse than to check how much she left on her plate.

Note*: No research has been conducted on sexual competition and eating among men, although some consideration of evolutionary theory might suggest that men would be likely to eat more in the presence of other men as a display of aggressiveness and dominance. Also, my wife was never afraid to order the family plate at the barbecue shack, and finish it!