Are you HANGRY?

There’s a good reason you feel anger when deprived of food, but can the mood actually be a positive sign?

Picture your usual group gathering of family or friends – you’re all out to dinner and start off chatting nicely. If it’s a late dinner or your meals take a while to arrive, the mood changes. As time wears on, everyone’s patience wears out. You turn into snapping turtles, dredging up old grievances and picking on each other. You’re not usually so unpleasant, you’re all just mighty, mighty hangry (hungry + angry).

If you’ve snapped at loved ones, growled at waitstaff and practically gnawed innocent bystanders’ arms off, you’ll be pleased to know your hangriness is not all in your imagination and you’re not alone. It’s all too real.

Feed the ghrelin

Several scientific studies have examined how aggression rises as our blood glucose levels drop since our last meal. One such study suggests judges pass heavier sentences the longer they’ve gone without food. In another examining married couples, people stuck more pins in a voodoo doll representing their partner as they became hangrier (yikes!).

Associate professor Zane Andrews studies the science behind food and mood in his role at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne. The key to your hangriness, he explains, is ghrelin, a hormone from the stomach that’s important for regulating food intake, as well as your moods and motivation.

“As the food you’ve consumed goes through the intestine and gets lower and lower, and your stomach becomes more and more empty, you start to release this hormone, ghrelin,” he says. “If you don’t eat, the parts of the brain that think you’re hungry send signals to other parts of the brain that control your mood and emotions.”