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Do you ever get so hungry that you feel downright ratty? When you’ve tipped from merely hungry to madly ‘hangry’?

It’s not an uncommon feeling, but are there ways we can manage that hangry feeling?

In the What’s Up Docs? podcast from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4, twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken ask whether hangry is just a handy marketing phrase to sell more chocolate bars or if it’s got a basis in science. And how should you handle that hangry feeling when it comes?

Listen to the hangry episode of What's Up Docs?

Is 'hanger' real?

“If it occurs in human populations, then it's real,” says Prof Viren Swami, a social psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University. “And to the extent that people have at least demonstrated symptoms of hanger – they are angrier when they're hungry – then you have to say it's real.”

And these observations and backed up by scientific evidence. Viren conducted one of the first real-world hanger experiments after his wife said he was hangry all the time. “You can demonstrate that hanger is a real phenomenon,” says Viren. But he says hanger is not a necessary outcome of hunger and it depends on how you interpret information in your environment.

When you feel hungry, your interpretation of your environment will be more negative and will trigger irritability because you can’t process what’s happening around you. The more negative the environment at that hungry moment, the greater risk it will trigger hanger.

Six ways to reduce your hanger:

1. When you’re hungry, reach for the right kind of snack

The normal fluctuations of your blood sugar levels during the day are not what’s causing you to feel irritable or grumpy. “Hunger is a sensation that we experience, and it's that sensation of hunger that's probably the most important driver of our emotions, our emotional state and subsequently our behaviour,” says Viren Swami.

It’s the feeling of hunger that’s affecting you. So rather than reaching for something that gives you a sugar kick, eat something to make you feel fuller.

2. Accept the feeling but change the outcome

We often don’t notice when we are hangry, and we also don’t see the impact on other people.

The first step is to recognise that it’s your hunger and the situation making you feel bad. Viren says it’s about “just accepting that sometimes I will be hangry and there's nothing wrong with being hangry. It's how I treat other people when I'm hangry.”

Be more self-aware and then it will be easier to give the people around you a break.

3. Change your eating habits

If you really hate that hungry feeling, Viren suggests avoiding it by eating a little less each time, but eating five times a day rather than three. This way you’re less likely to feel hungry in the breaks when you’re not eating.

4. Practise being mindful at key moments in the day

Each one of us responds to being hungry in different ways, depending on our attitude to food, willingness to eat or our fear of food. And we have trigger moments when hunger can turn to hanger.

Be aware of when you are likely to feel hungry. Mindfully check in with yourself at those moments when you could feel stressed, like arriving home from work, going into a meeting or picking up children from school. Observe how you feel and ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? And what can I do with these emotions? Is there something I need to do to change how I'm feeling?

5. Plan for the hungry gap

Does the anticipation of the hungry gap make you anxious? If you know when you are most likely to feel hangry, schedule your day to manage those moments when you do the things that could irritate you while hungry, like hardcore exercise or children’s bedtime. Eat something beforehand or avoid doing those activities at hungry moments, if you can.

On the flip side, when you know you’re going to be hungry, try and plan pleasant experiences so the chances of you getting hangry are reduced.

6. Embrace the hunger

For some of us, hunger can be motivational, helping us to achieve our goals. Know that you’re going to eat eventually and get on with your day. Let the short interval of hunger drive you to get things done.

And finally, if all else fails, do what Chris van Tulleken does: have a banana!

Prof Viren Swami's hangriness study

In 2022, Prof Viren Swami and his colleagues published a study in which they investigated the relationship between hunger and negative emotions using surveys with 64 participants over 21 days. Participants reported hunger, anger, irritability, pleasure and arousal five times daily. Results showed that higher hunger levels correlated with increased anger and irritability, and decreased pleasure, supporting the ‘hangry’ phenomenon.

Study report: