slice of pizza (Photo : Reuters)
A new study explains that human brains are programmed to have late-night snack attacks even when people are not hungry. It suggests that brains are less "visual" at nighttime, causing the late-night food cravings.
Brigham Young University conducted the new study about late-night eating. It included 15 healthy women who viewed 360 images of food during one day session and one night session.
The new study was published in the journal Brain Imaging and Behavior. People often overeat at nighttime because their brains are less sensitive to food's rewards then.
That is why people are less satisfied when they choose a midnight snack than when they eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It encourages them to eat more than one snack.
Travis Masterson, the study's lead author, explains that at night people often overeat to satisfy late-night hunger because food is less "rewarding" visually then, according to Huffington Post. So midnight munchies are harder to satisfy.
The researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to view volunteers' brains as they looked at images of low-calorie healthy foods such as vegetables and fish, and unhealthy high-calorie foods such as donuts and ice cream.
Not surprisingly, the participants' brains spiked when they saw the images, and more so after spotting the high-calorie foods. However, the researchers observed that there was less brain activation when volunteers viewed the pictures at night, according to CNET.
The result shows that the "food reward" response of people's brains decreases in the evening, such as when they raid their fridge for a midnight snack. That explains why people continue to feel hungry late at night after eating multiple snacks.
The researchers do not understand why food is less rewarding in the evening. One theory is that people could be hungry at midnight, for example, due to their circadian rhythms. These rhythms control humans' activity and rest patterns.
Masterson has some advice to avoid overeating at night. He suggests that people make small yet "meaningful" changes in their eating habits, keeping in mind that they are influenced less "visually" then.
So think twice about reaching for that extra triple-chocolate cookie.
