Food sharing has become quite popular over the last decade, with companies offering food options specifically designed to be shared. As the popularity has grown, so too has concerns over the potential negative impact on consumer health. Despite companies’ explicit claims to the contrary, critics maintain that food sharing may be encouraging excessive caloric intake. The current article provides the first systematic exploration of why this may be happening. Three main and two supplementary studies suggest that food sharing reduces perceived ownership, which, in turn, leads people to mentally decouple calories from their consequence. Thus, sharing can reduce the perceived fattening potential of a consumption episode without biasing caloric estimates. This phenomenon persists even when explicit caloric information is provided, and it applies to both healthy and unhealthy foods. Importantly, we establish a relevant downstream consequence by illustrating that people tend to subsequently select calorie-dense foods after underestimating the fattening potential of a shared consumption episode. A roadmap for future research and practical implications are discussed.

中文翻译：

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你的薯条比我的少发胖：食物共享如何在不偏向热量估计的情况下偏向增肥判断

在过去十年中，食物共享变得非常流行，公司提供专门设计用于共享的食物选择。随着人气的增长，对消费者健康的潜在负面影响的担忧也在增加。尽管公司明确声称与此相反，但批评者坚持认为食物共享可能会鼓励过多的热量摄入。当前文章首次系统地探讨了为什么会发生这种情况。三项主要研究和两项补充研究表明，食物分享会减少感知所有权，这反过来又会导致人们在精神上将卡路里与后果分开。因此，分享可以减少消费事件的潜在增肥潜力，而不会偏向热量估计。即使提供明确的热量信息，这种现象仍然存在，它适用于健康和不健康的食物。重要的是，我们通过说明人们在低估了共同消费事件的增肥潜力后倾向于随后选择热量密集的食物来建立相关的下游结果。讨论了未来研究的路线图和实际意义。