First of all, we’d like to apologise for any distress caused by our April Fools’ post yesterday suggesting that commas should be placed in sentences where they simply have no right to be.
We’re taking a break from AI this month, at least in the topic of this blog. Instead, it’s almost lunchtime and these five food-related Words to Watch aren’t helping! Young men who are short on time are making boy kibble, an easy, meat and rice meal to support their gym habits. Some might say that boy kibble is just trying to reheat nachos, or produce an inferior reproduction or something. You’ll want to avoid boy kibble, of course, if you’re suffering from a mammalian meat allergy, an allergy arising from certain tick bites and growing in prevalence. A slightly fancier food trend at the moment is hot honey, honey which has been infused with chilli. It’s sweet on the surface, but with a kick underneath. A cinnamon roll, on the other hand, is sweet all the way through. Here, the term refers specifically to sweet, kind-hearted characters in fiction.
boy kibble
You might have heard of ‘girl dinner’, a term from a few years ago referring to simple meals involving minimal preparation, such as cheese and biscuits. Boy kibble follows a similar vein. It describes a low-effort, high-nutrient meal of mince, rice, and perhaps some flavour, made by young men who frequent the gym (‘gymbros’). It’s an easy high protein meal they can make in bulk and eat over a number of days. Kibble, a more American name for pet food, describes its simple flavour and dog food-like texture.
The simplicity of the meal is reminiscent of another current trend. Autism chow humorously refers to simple, one-pot meals made with flavours and textures that will not cause sensory overload for neurodivergent people, and, much like boy kibble, can be made in bulk and spread across multiple days.
mammalian meat allergy
This one is more or less what it says on the tin. In rare cases, people can develop an allergic reaction to the carbohydrate alpha gal, injected by ticks such as the American lone star tick and Australian paralysis tick. Alpha gal is also found in the mammalian meat we consume, so affected individuals can have the same severe allergic reaction from eating beef, pork, rabbit, or other mammalian meat. The reason that some people have this reaction is not yet known, but diagnoses have been increasing in Australia as declining feral fox populations have led to a resurgence in native bandicoot populations, and with them increasing paralysis tick populations.
cinnamon roll
A cinnamon roll is, first and foremost, sweet. It’s an apt term to describe a character in fiction who is unfailingly sweet, kind-hearted, well-meaning, and just all round nice. A cinnamon roll doesn’t have secret ulterior motives, nor are they being kind for their own gain. They’re just nice. The term is commonly used in a meme in which four characters are compared: one who looks like a cinnamon roll and is a cinnamon roll, on who looks like a cinnamon roll but would actually kill you, one who looks like they’d kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll, and one who looks like they’d kill you and probably actually would.
reheat nachos
Have you ever tried to reheat nachos? The microwave leaves the chips stale, the salsa is too warm, the sour cream has separated. It’s just worse. To reheat nachos, then, is a metaphorical extension of this, to produce a poor quality or inferior reproduction. It’s similar to the original, it maybe looks the same, or it tries to serve the same purpose, but, like microwaved nachos, it’s just worse, either in quality, or functionality, or entertainment, etc. For some bonus slang, this inferior version might be called the temu version, named after the Chinese online marketplace of the same name and the impression that the products available there are often low-quality reproductions of other products.
hot honey
Hot honey isn’t so much a new language trend as it is a new food trend. Honey infused with chilli has grown enormously in popularity in the last few years, being available now in supermarkets, as a topping on pizzas, and plenty of other places. Why does it deserve to go into the dictionary? Well, it’s not necessarily immediately clear what the term means – it’s not honey that has been warmed up in the microwave.
