The Midnight Snack: YES YOU ! Why the body craves junk food late at night. People consume dairy around breakfast time,and like their veggies best at dinner. The midnight snack leaders were ice cream,Crisps,cake,Chocolate and French Fries.Our bodies are hired wire for late night junk food cravings.Or, more scientifically, for late- night energy boosts in the form of calories -lots of them. In a study published last year in the Journal OBESITY researchers, regulated the sleeping and eating habits of volunteers over a two week stay in the lab. Regardless of when theyd woken up, when theyd last eaten,and how much theyd eaten that day,the volunteers were hungriest at night.And while their desire for vegetables stayed more or less the same throughout the day,their hunger for sweet ,salty,and starchy foods increased dramatically around 8.00 pm suggesting that our appetite for junk is governed more by our intrernal body clocks than by genuine hunger. One reason for this is fluctuation in the hormone cortisol,which tells the liver to release sugar into the blood.Because we dont need as much energy at night,cortisol levels decrease,telling our bodies that its time to go to sleep-when we stay awake,though,were driven to compensate for the resulting blood -sugar drop by eating food.But whats bad for our modern-day waistlines may have had an evolutionary benefit,said the authors of the OBESITY study: Because the body burns fewer calories at night,the urge to consume more of them in later hours may have helped our ancestors stay nourished when food was scarce. Another reason may be that end of day fatigue increases the temptation to indulge.When were tired,we make less of the hormone leptin,which brings on a satiated feeling,and more of the hunger hormone ghrelin.As a result,our sleepy brains pull a few tricks to nudge our bodies towards energy pick - me - ups in the form of calories. In one 2012 study,researchers found that when people were sleep deprived,the reward centres of their brains lit up more when they looked at pictures of junk foods than when they saw pictures of healthy foods(in well-rested people,the brain response was roughly the same for both food groups.) And another study ,also from 2012,found that lack of sleep led to reduced activity in the areas of the brain that controlled decision-making-and as a result,to greater cravings for fattening foods over healthier ones. Thank you for reading my post.Please leave me post if you wish.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:05:31 +0000
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