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There is a version of me that turns up around five in the afternoon. The kettle takes too long, a simple question earns a sigh, and everyone within ten feet is suddenly, mildly annoying. She has a name now, and it is not a flattering one: hangry. The good news is that she is not a character flaw. She is chemistry, running right on schedule, and once you understand what she is actually asking for, she is much easier to manage. Here's what's going on, the study that proves it, and the small habit that heads it off before it lands on the people you love.

Already know the five o'clock crankies all too well? My Blood Sugar Regulation Guide is the shortcut: simple shifts to keep your energy and mood steady all day, with no restriction and no rules to memorize. Get the Blood Sugar Regulation Guide → Or read on for the why.

Is being hangry actually real?

Yes, and it starts with your blood sugar. When you go too long without eating, the glucose in your blood drifts down. Your brain runs almost entirely on glucose and does not like to watch it drop, so your body steps in with stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, to push the level back up. Helpful, except those are the same hormones behind a racing mind, a short fuse and a complete loss of patience. Your body is trying to look after you. It just does it by making you a little feral.

That is why the feeling arrives so fast and seems to come from nowhere. The person who asked you a question at the wrong moment is rarely the real problem. Your fuel gauge has dropped into the red, and your body is sounding the alarm.

Did researchers really study being hangry?

They did, in one of my favourite studies to share, because it is both rigorous and a little ridiculous. Researchers followed 107 married couples for three weeks. Every evening, each person privately stuck anywhere from zero to fifty-one pins into a voodoo doll meant to represent their spouse, more pins for more anger, while their blood sugar was measured morning and night.

On the evenings someone's blood sugar ran low, the pins piled up. And in a separate lab game where they could blast their partner with an unpleasant noise, the lower-blood-sugar group chose louder, longer blasts. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Lower fuel, shorter fuse, with the data to back it up.

Why are some days so much worse?

Hangry is not equally fierce every afternoon, and the reasons are worth knowing.

• You went too long without eating. Skipping lunch, or running on a coffee and good intentions, sets up the steepest drop.

• Your last meal was mostly quick carbohydrates. A pastry, a bagel or a sweet coffee spikes your blood sugar and drops it just as fast, which leaves you hungry and short-tempered an hour later.

• You are short on sleep or stretched thin. Both make blood sugar harder to keep steady, so the dips hit harder and your patience runs out sooner.

Happily, none of these are permanent. They are patterns, and patterns are things you can adjust.

How do you stop the hangry hour?

The goal is not to white-knuckle your way to dinner. It is to keep your blood sugar from falling that far in the first place, so the stress hormones never get the signal to surge.

A few simple moves:

• Keep a steadying snack within reach. Something with protein, fibre and a little fat holds your blood sugar far better than crackers or fruit on their own.

• Don't skip meals on a long day. A balanced lunch is the cheapest insurance against a six o'clock meltdown.

• Pair your carbohydrates. An apple with a handful of nuts, or whole grain crackers with a bean dip, behaves very differently than the carbohydrate on its own.

My Lemony White Bean Dip is built for exactly this hour. Cannellini beans, lemon, garlic and good olive oil blitzed smooth, scooped with cut vegetables or a few whole grain crackers. The beans bring protein and fibre, the olive oil brings the fat, and together they hold you steady instead of spiking and dropping you again. Make it on Sunday, keep it front and centre in the fridge, and let five o'clock find you ready.

What should you eat to avoid getting hangry?

The longer-term fix is less about snacks and more about how your regular meals are built. A plate with some protein, some fibre and some healthy fat digests slowly and releases its energy gradually, so you get a gentle rise rather than a spike and a crash. Do that often enough and the hangry hour mostly stops turning up. That balance is the whole idea behind my cookbook, Love What's On Your Plate, if you'd like a season of meals that already do the work for you.

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Frequently asked questions

Is being hangry a real thing? Yes. When your blood sugar drops, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol to bring it back up, and those same stress hormones fuel irritability, so hunger and a short temper are genuinely linked.

What causes you to feel hangry? Mostly a dip in blood glucose, either from going too long without eating or from a meal of fast-digesting carbohydrates that sends your blood sugar up and then crashing down.

What foods help stop you getting hangry? Foods that combine protein, fibre and healthy fat, since they release their energy slowly. Think a bean dip with vegetables, an apple with nuts, or yogurt with seeds, rather than carbohydrates on their own.

How quickly does eating fix being hangry? Often within about fifteen to twenty minutes, once your blood sugar starts to recover. A balanced bite works better than straight sugar, which lifts you quickly and then drops you again.

Does skipping meals make you more irritable? It can. Longer gaps let your blood sugar fall further, which prompts a bigger stress-hormone response, so the crankiness tends to hit harder when you finally run low.

Ready to get off the rollercoaster?

You don't have to white-knuckle your way through five o'clock for the rest of your life. My Blood Sugar Regulation Guide turns all of this into a handful of simple, no-fuss shifts that keep your energy and your mood steady from morning to night, with no restriction and no rules to memorize.

Get the Blood Sugar Regulation Guide →