Your 2024 diet isn’t a blank check to be hangry

Being rude to restaurant servers is a terrible transgression. As much as I abhor it, I confess I’ve been guilty of the offense. More often than not, it’s because I was “hangry.”

The neologism combining “hungry” and “angry” has been around since at least 1956 and made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018. Often, it’s used as a punchline: “I’m sorry for what I said when I was hangry” on greeting cards or t-shirts, for example. It’s implied in the Snickers ad where a football player bites into a candy bar and reverts to civility after being a caustic and abusive Joan Collins in pure Dynasty diva form. “You aren’t you when you’re hungry” goes the tagline.

The trouble is, when you’re hangry, a very primal you emerges. It’s no laughing matter.