WOMEN'S brains are hard-wired for cake, new research shows.
Researchers put two dozen hungry men and women in a room with a plate of chocolate eclairs, separating them from the cakes with screens made of specially toughened glass.
While all the men were happy to wait until the screen was removed, the women immediately threw themselves violently against the glass until it began to crack.
Within 20 minutes half the women had bashed themselves unconscious while the other half suffered severe lacerations to their forearms but did secure the eclairs.
Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: "Scans of the male brains showed far less cake-based activity.
"But in the females, all the measurable activity in the brains we were still able to scan appeared to be linked to the desire for cake."
He added: "These women were not dashing themselves against the glass in a conscious effort to get cake, they simply had no choice."
Brubaker admitted the experiment had not uncovered the complex mechanisms which control how much cake women can eat, but it did confirm that the word 'cake' is written through their brains like a stick of rock.
He said: "If you're ever in a café and you accidentally move between a woman and a profiterole you should drop to the floor, curl up in a tight ball and lie perfectly still.
"It won't save you, but at least there might be some bits left to put in a coffin."