Why You Crave Bad Food When You're Tired

Devouring half a packet of biscuits while staying up trying to finish a task, switching fruit for a chocolate bar for your snack at work after an early start or desiring a croissant upon landing from a long flight, there could now be a reason why you reach for the bad food after a bad night's sleep.

Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago lately presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco, reports Science News.

Participants were given different amounts of sleep, eight hours or four hours, and then their reaction to smells of high-calorific foods were tested.

Participants slept for both lengths of time, separated by a week of regular sleep. On the day after they either had full or partial sleep, participants valued the pleasantness and strength of sweet and savory high-calorific food smells such as crisps and cinnamon rolls. They were then requested to rate the smell of non-foods like fir trees.

Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had “definitely enhanced” brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good night’s sleep.

The test supports the long-held association between sleep deprivation and excessive eating and weight gain.

So, if you want to stop reaching for the chocolate every day, maybe a few extra hours sleep is all you need.