TIL that women with a "sweet tooth" are or will be Fat

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a pair of psychologists at Florida State University studied rats that were fed either a standard diet or a sweetened version of the same food. The rats eating the sweetened food ate more calories than those eating the standard diet did, with the female rats eating the most. They consumed 35 percent more calories than the male rats, which ate only 10 to 15 percent more than usual. The researchers allowed some of the rats to exercise, and those rats did cut back on their calorie consumption, but the female rats cut back far less than the male rats did. This led the researchers to theorize that although both sexes have an innate preference for high-calorie, high-sugar foods, females’ preference is more pronounced.

Rats aside, human females report having cravings for sweets more often than men do. If those cravings have a biological basis, there are a few reasons why women would benefit from calorie-rich food. They need to maintain a certain percentage of body fat (about 17 percent) in order to sustain a pregnancy, so an innate preference for sweets would be an efficient way to pack on the pounds that keep the menstrual cycle in action. It’s also possible that women’s elevated estrogen levels during the cycle are what cause the cravings.

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