Food inducing bad behavior? It’s not that hard to swallow
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I wasn’t in a particularly bad mood as I walked to work, but seeing this headline on a newsstand magazine lifted my spirits considerably: ”Is your breakfast making you bitchy?”
Is it? I wondered, more cheerful than I’d been all morning. I grabbed Marie Claire off the shelf and wolfed down the article. Well, well, well - ”my” crankiness is not mine at all. I can blame that stupid apple I grabbed on the way out the door. Turns out that because I didn’t pair it with nuts, soy milk or whole grains, it left me short on magnesium, which reportedly eases the symptoms of depression.
I’m not sure if it was the Granny Smith speaking, or just a well-placed suspicion that this hunger-as-scapegoat theory was too delicious to be true, but by the time I arrived at the office I was back in a funk.
Until, that is, I got a call from an irritable friend. ”Now I know why I’m always so cranky,” she said. ”It’s my food swings.”
Food swings? ”Don’t you mean mood swings?” I snapped.
”Don’t be so hangry,” she countered.
”Hangry?” I snorted.
She sighed the ticked-off sigh of a woman short on protein or healthy grains. ”When your hunger’s making you angry,” she explained, ”you’re hangry.”
I think she started telling me that she’d read about the adult version of the food-mood link in a newspaper, but I was no longer listening. I was wondering if I could get a doctor’s note for life. ”Has this been recognized as a medical disease?” I asked. ”Do you think insurance would cover a soy smoothie?” I started hunting for my doctor’s phone number.
You know the Twinkie defense - in which defendants claim diminished capacity because they’ve eaten too much sugar? Well, this is like the anti-Twinkie defense. My juice fast made me do it, your honor.
I’m just hoping this latest behavioral cop-out not only catches on but spreads. We need a lexicon to cover exhaustion-induced snits. How about ”tangry” for tired and angry?
I mentioned the concept to an acquaintance while doing some last-minute holiday shopping. She took a moment to consider her yuletide-induced feelings of rage. ”I’m ’yangry,’ ” she reported.
Me, too, I said, really getting into the spirit of things. I was about to graze at the food court - therapy, you know - when I remembered that nothing puts me in a worse mood - not even a magnesium deficiency - than holiday weight gain.
