Study Says Men Better Able To Resist Food Temptation

Men may be better able to resist food temptation than women, according to a brain scan study released this week.

Researchers for the study, published in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academies of Science journal, scanned the brains of men and women who hadn't eaten in 17 hours. They then flashed food in front of them as they told the subjects to resist their hunger urges. Only the men showed a drop in brain activity in regions involved in motivation and emotion.

Paul Smeets, of the Image Sciences Institute at the University Medical Center Utrecht, in the Netherlands, said he theorizes the difference in brain activity when the food was presented demonstrates why women have a harder time sticking to diets than their male counterparts.

Smeets studies hunger issues using brain imaging, but was not involved in this latest study, CNN reported.

Researchers in the study scanned the brains of 23 "normal" weight people - 13 women and 10 men. They were asked what their favorite foods were, and these items were presented to them almost a full day after they ate their last meal.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35.3 percent of American women and 33.3 percent of men were considered obese in 2006.