When it comes to food, the old saying is that, “The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” But a new study has more to add to that.

A recent study published in the journal Appetite says that men and women have more similarities than you would think when it comes to being pampered, food being on the list. In fact the study reports that they found women are more receptive to romantic gestures on a full stomach, rather than an empty one due to the reward-related neural regions in the brain, according to The Weekly Observer.

Alice Ely of the College of Arts and Sciences further explains how filling a special lady’s stomach with tasty bites is just as seductive as whispering romantic lines in her ear. She explained that the study records revealed that eating prepared women for rewards beyond what the actual food offered. With this data, it clearly helps support the link between food and sex.

The researchers were set out to determine how the brain responds to food as a reward differed distinctively between women who are aware of its future effect on their body weight and while the other group was ignorant of the fact. All of the volunteers for their study were around college age and had similar average body weights.

The researchers found that the women who had a past of dieting and awareness around what food does to their body were more perceptive to food signals than those who had never tried any type of dieting.

Ely confirmed that when somebody has a history of dieting their brain is more affected by the reward circuitry to crave for food whereas the women who had never done any dieting were not as linked to the reaction. Other studies have shown that women who are diet conscious also tend to have a higher level of weight gain than women who pay no attention.

The study was supported by MRI scanning that clearly distinguished between women who take their dieting seriously having a different brain activity in certain parts of the brain than those who did not.