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.

FDA Tells CocaCola To Remove 'Plus' Claim On New Diet Soda

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning the Coca-Cola Company that its new Diet Coke Plus product is in violation of federal rules allowing certain food and beverages to make nutritious claims on their labels.

The agency sent a letter to Coca-Cola executives on Dec. 10 saying that the company has 15 days to respond to the warning and explain in detail "each step being taken to correct the current violations and prevent similar violations."

The FDA told Coke that it is in violation of certain federal rules because, "Your Diet Coke Plus product is mislabeled... .because the product makes a nutrient content claim but does not meet the criteria to make that claim."

Among the regulations the FDA says Coca-Cola is in violation of is a rule that the FDA considers it inappropriate to fortify snack foods such as carbonated beverages. The FDA specifically objects to Coke's use of the word "plus." In order for a product to legally contain the word, the product must contain at least 10 percent or more of the "Reference Daily Intake or Daily Reference Value for the nutrient per reference amount customarily consumed than an appropriate reference food," the letter states.