The sun gets a lot done. Not only is it responsible for fueling life on Earth and keeping us alert and happy, but it turns out the sun perhaps influences how much some of us eat. A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University describe a new mechanism in a paper published yesterday (July 11) in Nature Metabolism in which sun exposure appears to stimulate hunger—though only in males.
The researchers analyzed data from Israel’s three-year National Health and Nutritional Survey (MABAT), which included 3,000 participants between the ages of 25 to 65. By looking at season, food intake, and self-reported sex, they found that men increased their consumption by 17 percent during the warmer months of March through September relative to the rest of the year, while women’s caloric consumption remained the same.
One possible explanation for that finding is that there are sex-based differences in how sun exposure ...
