For when you need food in a scurry.
The latest food trend to take over TikTok is “rat snacking” — eating small and random snacks with sometimes odd combinations as a guilty pleasure.
As opposed to the appetizer course-inspired girl dinner — which looks like putting a plate together of some leftover slices of deli meat, fruit, cheese and crackers, rather than making a three-square meal — rat snacks are “unhinged” combinations of foods to make just one small treat.
Humans put together their “rat snacks” similar to how rats scrounge together whatever they can find and eat it.
One content creator shared one of her “favorite little sneaky snacks”: chip soup.
Ken Eurich on TikTok puts crushed-up chips in a bowl with some vinegar and eats it with a spoon.
Abbey Sharp, a registered dietician who posts content on her TikTok @abbeyskitchen, shared a “super unhinged rat snack” with her 748,000 followers.
“When your InstaCart shopper throws in an unexpected pack of processed cheese, you turn it into a budget-friendly ‘rat snack’ with whatever else you have in the fridge,” she captioned the video.
Sharp’s shopper threw in cheese slices that gave her an idea for a snack.
She put apples, a little bit of butter, a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of brown sugar into a bowl and popped it into the microwave. The melted concoction then went onto slices of bread and were topped with the cheese slices.
Sharp said in the video that the weird snack tasted like “a classic apple pie with a slice of cheddar on top.”
Sharp previously told Bustle that this trend comes more out of a need of necessity due to finances — which makes it relatable to young people on the internet.
“[With] the rise in grocery costs, people are trying to find any way that they can save money and for a lot of people, this means digging deep into the pantry, freezer, or fridge to pull together any little bits and pieces that may not traditionally go together,” Sharp told the outlet.
She added, “These rat snacks are becoming more popular because people often don’t see themselves making the smoothie bowls that they see on Instagram, but they can pull together a piece of cheese and a pickle with a pinch, because they have it on hand too, you know?”