According to a new research, humans do not have an evolutionary mechanism yet to avoid overeating and becoming obese.

The team of researchers at the University of Exeter in UK said that humans do not have a mechanism to avoid overeating because being overweight was never a significant threat to survival compared being underweight. They found that the humans have a very strong urge to maintain body weight.

The researchers also found that this is the reason that people tend to eat more in winter when food is scarce in the natural world. Researchers said that this is why people tend to eat more during Christmas and miss on resolutions to lose weight.

The team used computer modelling to predict the amount of fat animals should store assuming that the selection gives animals including humans, a dependable strategy to maintain the healthiest weight. The computer model predicts the amount of fat an animal stores keeping in mind the food availability and the risk of being killed by a predator when looking for food. The models shows that animals should have an idea body weight, above which they should tryto lose weight and below which they should try to gain weight.

Lead author Andrew Higginson, from the University of Exeter, said, You would expect evolution to have given us the ability to realise when we have eaten enough, but instead we show little control when faced with artificial food. Because modern food today has so much sugar and flavour the urge humans have to eat it is greater than any weak evolutionary mechanism which would tell us not to.”