Do the weekly shop as a couple and you’ll buy more junk food

IF you’re trying to cut calories and happen to be heading for the supermarket this weekend, you might want to leave your other half at home, research suggests.

Couples who shop together buy more – especially unhealthy products such as biscuits and crisps – than those who shop alone, the study found.

The researchers said couples act as ‘accomplices’ when they shop together rather than ‘minders’.

‘Everyone has weaknesses, for example, for sweets or a burger and fries,’ said Professor Robert Wilken, who led the study. ‘The accomplice effect means that when you go shopping together, you give each other a kind of “permission” to consume so-called vice products. As a result, the shared shopping basket contains more vice products.’

Researchers in Germany approached couples shopping together at a Christmas market. Half the 75 couples were randomly seated separately from their partner, so that they made decisions individually, while the other couples were seated together, making decisions jointly.

They were shown an online shop featuring 44 items including ‘vice’ foods such as biscuits and Christmas stollen and ‘virtue’ foods such as fruit. They were told to shop for joint consumption.

When shopping alone, they bought an average of eight products. Shopping together, they opted for 20, spending an extra €46, on average. Of the 12 extra products, nine were ‘vice’ items – totalling €42 of the extra €46.

‘These findings clearly support an accomplice effect,’ said Professor Wilken, of the ESCP Business School Berlin, whose study was published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.