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As one of the favorite holidays for children approaches, Halloween brings out the sweet tooth in the little ones and even the adults too.

If you have ever indulged in one too many candies on Halloween and experienced a terrible stomach ache but wondered how on earth your child doesn't experience the same, new research can tell you the scientific reason why this happens.

According to researchers, evolution and a gene called foxo (found in the muscle, liver and pancreas) may be the reason for stomach pains. "In normal young animals foxo turns on and off quite easily, allowing for a seamless adjustment to changes in diet," lead author Jason Karpac, PhD, Assistant Research Professor at the Buck Institute said in a news release. "The process is evolutionarily conserved, it protects young animals and helps guarantee their survival."

This process can be adapted to why children are barely affected by the over indulgence of candy in one day.

Researchers at the Buck Institute worked with fruit flies to further study the metabolic change we experience in later age.

"Scientists at the Buck Institute have identified a mechanism that helps the flies adapt to changes in diet when they're young; they've discovered that same mechanism gets misregulated as the flies age, disrupting metabolic homeostasis, or balance," according to the study.

After focusing on the function of foxo in the intestines of fruit flies researchers found that when young animals experience a change in diet insulin signals are restrained which then starts the function of foxo. 

"It has been proposed that our modern high-sugar/high fat diets can lead to misregulation of evolutionarily conserved dietary responses," said Buck Institute faculty Heinrich Jasper, PhD, lead scientist on the study. "Metabolism is a very complex process -- lots of things can go wrong which increases stress in the animals." 

According to Jasper and the study, a balance in metabolism is compromised as we age. 

"Our aim is to develop treatments that would preserve well-functioning metabolism as part of healthy aging - something that would likely not ever include indulging in candy binges," said Jasper. 

The findings are published in the journal Cell Reports.