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How do you stop raiding the office pantry for snacks? And why do some people crave salty snacks, while others prefer sweet treats? We put down our bag of chips to ask the experts.It’s 3pm and like clockwork, your brain – and colleague – are nudging you to make that trip to the office pantry for coffee and snacks. Or if you’re working from home, you can’t help but be drawn to the fridge like, every five minutes. Why are you hardwired to snack, especially when you’re trying to lose weight – and if the boss is reading this over...

In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, Güler and his colleagues demonstrate that the pleasure center of the brain that produces the chemical dopamine, and the brain's separate biological clock that regulates daily physiological rhythms, are linked, and that high-calorie foods—which bring pleasure—disrupt normal feeding schedules, resulting in overconsumption. Using mice as study models, the researchers mimicked the 24/7 availability of a high-fat diet, and showed that anytime snacking eventually results in obesity and related health problems. Güler's team found that mice fed a diet comparable to a wild diet in calories and fats maintained normal eating...

Snacking under stress can contribute to weight gain, and new research shows the snacking doesn't stop for women when the pressure slacks off. Jennifer Waugh, a clinical nutrition manager at Baltimore's Mercy Medical Center, said stress is a common trigger for snacking, especially eating comfort foods, including sweets, pastries, soft drinks or chips. "It seems like people either want sweet, bland, salty, chocolate, high-fat things that are not healthy and are very much considered junk food," Waugh said. "You can have a bottled water, that's always good, or yogurt or milk because it has protein that can make you feel...

Rosie O' Donnell blames fame for making her fat.O'Donnell writes in a column in the gay magazine 'The Advocate' that fame robbed her of her 'Yellow' which is her way of saying her energy or happiness. O'Donnell said she got 'bigger and sadder' as she became more 'starved for yellow.'O'Donnell's solution was to eat more and more.O'Donnell said the bigger she got, the angrier she felt.This is O'Donnell's first column since joining the Advocate as a regular contributor. It's in the May 13 issue.