What your eating habits reveal about your personality

You are what you eat, or so the saying goes. But it may be more accurate to say that you are how you eat.

Last week, an unscientific but all-too-relatable listicle on LittleThings.com broke down different personality types based on eating habits, examining the personalities of people who eat fast, slow, adventurously and everything in between.

Is there any psychological basis to these claims? Actually, there might be.

According to Juliet Boghossian, a Los Angeles-based behavioural food expert and founder of food behaviour research firm Food-ology, we can "absolutely" make inferences about someone's personality based on their eating habits.

"Food-related habits can in fact reveal facets of an individual's personality and behavioural tendencies," Boghossian told The Huffington Post in an email. "What you want to observe is your 'consistent' or 'typical' food-related habits, idiosyncrasies and rituals."

We talked to Boghossian and Julia Hormes, a psychologist specializing in food behaviours at the State University of New York at Albany, about what our eating habits really say about who we are. Here's what they had to say about a few popular eating styles.

The Slow Eater - We all know the type: After everyone else has finished their meal, you'll find this person plodding along, eating one little bite at a time. When sitting down at the table, the slow eater takes his or her sweet time - and is always the last person to finish the meal. According to Boghossian, slow eaters are usually people who like to be in control and know how to appreciate life. They also tend to be confident and even-keeled. People who eat slowly only sometimes, however, may do so because of low energy or a sad mood. "Our mood is known to affect our eating rate," Hormes said. While slow eaters might feel pressured to catch up to everyone else, Hormes notes that there are some real health perks to being a slow eater. "Slow eating has been shown to be associated with decreased energy intake, increased satiety and higher pleasantness ratings of meals," she said.

The Fast Eater - There's a good chance you or someone else in your family fits the description of the fast eater - and if you grew up with a fast eater, you probably developed a habit of fighting for seconds. This person tends to barrel through meals, cleaning the plate before the rest of the table has finished even half of their meal. 

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