Always Hangry

Remember when eggs were the enemy, jelly beans were a "fat-free snack," and a seven-day diet told you to eat eight bananas and drink eight glasses of skim milk in one day? George Duran and food and wellness writer Karla Walsh go back to the '90s, when the food rules were loud, confident and mostly wrong.

They play Good Food or Bad Food — bagels, cottage cheese, avocados, nuts, butter and egg yolks — and argue about whether anyone should ever eat half a bagel. George runs through the egg substitutes that replaced the yolk (from Egg Beaters to n...

Side Dish is a little different from our regular episodes: no co-host, no rants, no games — just one focused conversation with someone who really knows their food. For the full Always Hangry experience, check out our other episodes.

Ever wonder why the pistachios you grew up with turned your fingers red? George Duran sits down with Jeff Nichols, vice president of supply chain and grower relations at Nichols Farms, a family-owned grower in Hanford, California, that's been farming for more than 60 years. Jeff walks George through a full year in a pistachio orchard, why most shells split op...

George Duran opens the fridge with Delish food editor and recipe developer Taylor Ann Spencer, and it is not pretty in there. They start with the Eat Me First trend, where you give soon-to-expire food its own labeled bin, and George admits his version of that bin is the back of the fridge. From there: the foods we forget most, whether bread and potatoes belong in the fridge at all (they disagree), and George's habit of plastic-wrapping every pepper he buys.

Then Taylor Ann tells George that eggs should be stored pointy end down. He does not...

Why do we love hacking a box mix? George Duran and Delish food editor Taylor Ann Spencer — writer of the Mostly Vegetarian newsletter and proud user of "condimental meat" — dig into the strange history of cake mix, from Bisquick and the first dehydrated gingerbread mix to Betty Crocker's gelatin-spiked Color Vision cake, Campbell's tomato soup cake, diet-soda cakes and a tuna-filled Bisquick ring nobody asked for. Taylor shares the boxed mac and cheese trick her dad taught her, George lays out the three upgrades that actually make a box mix better, and they play a round of Grandma or TikT...

"Low fat" might be the most fattening words on the bag. George Duran and recurring co-host Karla Walsh open with a brand-new study out of Turkey. People ate noticeably more of the exact same snack when it was labeled "low fat" or "high protein." Then they walk the fake-healthy aisle:

There's also a round of Trend or Trash on protein cookie dough. And a crash course in...

A man once ate 57 cow brains in fifteen minutes. Another ate the leaves off 74 feet of stinging nettles. A third downed 49 raw garlic cloves in five, and reported that the garlic got stronger every time it came back up. George Duran opens the show by dragging Karla Walsh through the strangest corners of competitive eating history — the first recorded pie-eating tournament in Toronto in 1878, where contestants knelt in front of raspberry tarts with their hands tied behind their backs and won a nicely bound book for it; the 1909 Manhattan Fat Men's Club contest where a 380-pound former alderman put aw...

Why is your bag of Doritos 86% air? What does a rock star's backstage snack list actually say about them? And what would you order if you knew it was the last thing you'd ever eat?

George Duran sits down with Brooklyn-based artist and food photographer Henry Hargreaves, a New Zealander who describes himself as a sociologist who happens to work in food. They start with Waste of Space, the series where Henry vacuum-sealed convenience store snacks to measure exactly how much of each bag is nitrogen: Chex Mix came in at 56%, Fritos 64%, Pringles 66%, Doritos 86%. George runs through...

What happens when you deep fry a MacBook, plate a military ration like it came out of a Michelin kitchen, and ask a doomsday prepper what's for dinner after civilization ends? George Duran sits down with Brooklyn-based artist and food photographer Henry Hargreaves, whose work turns food into a mirror for how we consume everything else. They get into Deep Fried Gadgets (and the one detail almost everyone missed), the strangest things Americans have actually battered and fried at state fairs — deep fried butter, deep fried Coca-Cola, pickle-topped Oreos — and a few new deep-fry ideas courtesy of ChatGPT that Geor...

Is it ever okay to eat with your hands at a restaurant? George and Karla Walsh set the rules, rebrand the world's worst food names, and Chef Vivek Surti of Tailor Nashville explains why "curry" doesn't actually mean anything.

George Duran and Karla Walsh open the fine-dining rulebook and start crossing things out. Which foods are you allowed to pick up with your hands — and who decided that? There's a list. It involves bones, buns, edible wrappers, and one very firm position on tomahawk steaks.

Then: the science on whether touching your food actually makes it...

Summary

One gluten-free guest can derail a dinner party. One meatball can derail a friendship. George Duran and food writer Karla Walsh lay out the unwritten rules of sharing plates, expose what "best by" actually means, and meet the forager New York City arrested for eating a dandelion in Central Park.

Show Notes

There is an exact number of appetizers a restaurant will bring to your table, and it is never the number of people sitting at it.

George Duran and Des Moines food writer Karla Walsh open this one on...

Every year, thousands of new food products launch in the United States with one goal: to become the thing you can't stop eating. Some of them solve a real problem. Some of them are cotton candy that tastes like salted butter.

George Duran spent two days at the Summer Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center — 2,300 exhibitors, 32,000 people, and a tote bag that ended up heavier than a Costco run. He ate jam with electrolytes in it. He ate oatmeal flavored with garlic and miso. He ate goat cheese that had turned purple. He was handed an en...

George Duran and food writer Karla Walsh open the fridge on the stuff nobody says out loud.

First up: the genuinely unhinged things Costco has sold in bulk — gold bars, six-foot nutcrackers, 72-pound wheels of Parmesan, buckets of apocalypse food, and yes, caskets💀💰 (buy one, get a free divorce certificate, apparently).

Then brunch goes on trial. Is it a real meal, or just an excuse to charge $20 for eggs the head chef was too hungover to cook? George has a theory.

In "Trend or Trash," Dubai chocolate gets the treatment, followed by a round of...

George and Karla dive into the wild world of buffets in this lively episode of The Always Hangry Podcast, revealing how these all-you-can-eat feasts can morph people into buffet beasts! They chat about the psychology behind buffet behavior, like how diners with heavier BMIs tend to attack the buffet with chopsticks while lighter folks take a more strategic approach.

The conversation takes a humorous turn as they discuss the latest food scams, including folks using AI to get refunds on takeout by doctoring food pics. Plus, George introduces a special guest, Michael Rosenzweig, who’s shaking up th...

This episode goes deep on exotic meats and the strange lengths people go to for food — starting with a website that sells, wait for it, opossum tail (just the tail). George and Feel Good Foodie's Yumna Jawad work their way through yak filet mignon, giraffe hot dogs, zebra sausage, and George's own unwitting run-in with cat meat at a childhood baseball game. From there, they get into the FDA's official "food defect levels" — the surprisingly specific amount of mold, insect fragments, and rodent hair the government allows in your ketchup and spices — before tackling the eternal restaurant question: is it eve...

George Duran and Karla Walsh kick off a deliciously wild ride on the Always Hangry podcast, diving into the zany world of Costco food samples, dietary quirks, and the hilarious lengths people go to when it comes to food.

They explore the cult-like following of Costco, where samples can skyrocket sales by a whopping 2000%! George shares some eyebrow-raising anecdotes about the most bizarre things sampled at Costco, from lemon crème to even wet dog food, leaving listeners in stitches.

They also tackle the serious side of dietary restrictions and the myths surrounding olive oil, e...

Food isn't complicated. People make it complicated.

Always Hangry is a new food comedy podcast where chef and TV host George Duran calls out the weird, frustrating, and totally ridiculous ways we all behave around food — Costco sample chaos, restaurant etiquette, grocery-store habits, and all the things we do that somehow make perfect sense until you actually think about them.

No recipes. Nothing precious. Just the conversation you'd have after a couple of drinks when someone finally says the thing everyone's thinking.

New episodes launch Tuesday, July 21st. Follow Always Hangry wherever you ge...