Why Men Make Better Dieters

[Guest guest]

By Adapted from voices.washpost.com/checkup

Tuesday, January 27, 2009; Page HE02

Why Men Make Better Dieters

Why do women seem to have a much harder time sticking to their diets

than men do? A new study provides a provocative clue: Women's brains

appear to have more of a mind of their own, so to speak, when food

beckons.

Gene-Jack Wang of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and his

colleagues quizzed 13 healthy women and 10 men about their favorite

foods and then asked them to fast for at least 17 hours before coming

in for a series of brain scans.

Before two of the scans, the researchers tempted the subjects with

their favorite foods, whether it was lasagna, pizza, cinnamon buns,

barbecue ribs or chocolate cake. The subjects could smell and even

taste the food, but they couldn't eat it. Before one of the scans they

were asked to try to suppress their impulse to indulge by trying to

think about something else. They were also asked to describe how

hungry they were and how strong their desire to eat was.

In both men and women, a variety of brain areas associated with

regulating emotions, desire, conditioning, habit and motivation lit up

when the subjects were tempted with their favorite foods. And both men

and women described themselves as less hungry and less interested in

eating when they tried to suppress their appetite.

But only the men showed a decrease in activity in the parts of the

brain activated by food when they tried to tamp down their appetite,

the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences.

The researchers are unsure why these sex differences exist, but it may

be because of the difference in sex hormones such as estrogen.

-- Rob Stein