When a Food Blogger Gets Hangry….

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #EatASNICKERS #CollectiveBias

Have a ever seen a food blogger get HANGRY?

You’d figure that, for people who spend the majority of their days around food–making it, tasting it, styling it, photographing it–hanger isn’t a problem. Let me make this clear: HANGER IS REAL. YES. EVEN FOR FOOD BLOGGERS.

“But how is this possible when you spend all of your time around food?” you ask. Excellent question. Before I launch into my self-righteous explanation, however, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about what hanger actually entails. Here’s the dirty dish from my favorite reliable source for information, Urban Dictionary:
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Hanger (n): A lethal combination of hunger and anger, the result of waiting so long to eat that your blood sugar drops to dangerously low levels, impairing both your mood and your judgment. Particularly manifests itself when you are with a significant other and trying to make decisions about where to eat now that you’re both starving.

Heh. Don’t worry, I smiled sheepishly when I read that last part, too. Totally justified!

There are three main reasons why food bloggers are 53% more likely to get hangry than your average Jane or Joe, and 72% more likely to do stupid things like make up statistics when food is not readily available.

The first reason is that food bloggers are just hungry people to begin with. Now, maybe this isn’t true for everyone, but if you’re going to dive into this line of work, it’s likely that you’ve got an appetite and that you want to satisfy it.

Likewise, when you don’t satisfy it, you get hungry pretty quickly. Sometimes unreasonably so. And that hunger quickly turns into hanger.

And then anybody crossing your path to the nearest vending machine had better watch out. I’m a total diva and drama mama when I’m not fed! Rawr.

The second reason is that we spend so, SO much of our free time browsing other bloggers’ food photos that rumbling tummies will be heard, no matter how many carrots we’re munching on in the meantime.

You’ve seen the gorgeous photos that leave you drooling and silently cursing yourself for looking at food porn during work hours. Now imagine that food porn is work, and that work happens at all hours of the day. So now you’re cursing yourself for looking at this and this and this and this and this and having NO CONCEIVABLE WAY to teleport any of that food into your poor hangray stomach.

The struggle is real, guys.

The third reason–and my person (un)favorite–is the presentation paradox. In the world of food blogging, we know one thing for sure: eat with eyes first.

This means that, as much as I would love to stab my fork straight into this cake as I’m photographing it….I can’t. Or shouldn’t. Because that would be messy. And unphotogenic. And against the laws of food photography. And hey, did somebody say hangry blogger? No, just me?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Lately, I’ve taken to loading up a bowl full of snacks to keep on hand while I’m photographing food just so I won’t stuff all of it straight into my face before I get a chance to snag a few pics.

When you’re a maker of sweet treats, it should come as no surprise that your cheat basket will contain some sweets as well. Can you tell what my childhood favorite is? (I’ll give you a hint: it’s in every single photo on this post, and it’s packed with the 4 essential ingredients to sustaining human life: roasted peanuts, nougat, caramel, and milk chocolate. Ummmm, yes please?)

Did you guess SNICKERS®? Lordie lord lord, I hope you did get the hint, because you’re absolutely right!

The BEST part of getting to feature one of my favorite chocolate bars of all time (besides being crazy excited about finally getting to do it!) was the eating. No taboos and presentation paradox here–these SNICKERS® bars are all for me, in all their eaten and gooey on-camera glory. Goodness, I love my job!

Maybe you’ve even seen those hilariously adorable cases sitting at the front of your local store while you’re out shopping these days. They’re all marked with the question “who are you when you’re hungry?” and a funny tagline: cranky, drama mama, and the list goes on…I swung by Walmart last weekend and bought seven bars–to, er, assist in my food photography, of course.

Come on, this is serious business…

If you want to find out whether you’re at ALL like me when you get hangry, take this hilarious quiz ASAP. If you do, I’ll even let you in on a secret!

When I’m hungry, I’m actually………..A CURMUDGEON 🙁 🙁 🙁 <–so so sooooo true. And not at all a surprise, yech!

So now I have to ask the $1,000,000 question…

Who are YOU when you’re hungry?