Researchers identify the time people across the globe crave takeout food

PanARMENIAN.Net - Researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland collected Google search entries from across the globe and looked for commonalities, specifically looking at searches during two one-week periods in September 2016 and March 2017.

They found that 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. are the most common times for ordering out food, such as pizza or Chinese, in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India, the Daily Mail reports.

The research, published Wednesday, July 25 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, also theorizes that these behaviors may be a result of our early ancestors.

In what they call 'modern foraging,' they believe it's influenced by a biological rhythm created by natural selection.

'Successful foraging behaviour has been favoured by natural selection, which shaped innate, species-specific decision rules that maximize energy gain,' the researchers explained in the study.

'Across the animal kingdom, predator–prey interactions have resulted in several decisions that attempt to optimize the energetic gain per unit of time.

'Here, we propose that information seeking behaviour (ISB) for food-associated search terms via Internet is a novel, human-specific appetitive behaviour that reflects food-related motivation,' they added.

Interestingly, Google searches for pizza tended to increase toward the tail-end of the week, with more queries on Saturday than Monday.

Researchers noted that the pattern doesn't appear to be driven by cultural differences, or things like religious observances and holidays.

Instead, there were two times of the day that most attracted people toward takeout food, suggesting that it may have something to do with our bodies natural circadian rhythm.

Put simply, the 'twin peaks' may be divided by early and late risers.

'It is likely that two different human populations are responsible for the daily ‘early' and ‘late' evening ISB peaks,' the researchers explained.