With more people spending a lot of time at home during the pandemic, family members have been picking up on some of their relatives' bizarre habits they might not have noticed before. One of these extremely common — but somewhat puzzling — behaviors seems to be exclusive to dads: Grown men across the country appear to be incapable of eating nuts and other small snacks without shaking them first.
But why?
Many people are discovering that when their dads go to eat, say almonds, they pour them into their hand then vigorously shake them around like they're rolling a pair of dice at a Las Vegas casino before launching said snack into their mouths.
Perplexed kids have been sharing videos on TikTok of their dads performing this ritual regularly.
Late last month, TikToker @ej_savage_lmao posted a video of a man shaking some nuts in his hand and posed a simple question to the universe: "Why does every dad SHAKE their snacks?!"
Others quickly noticed their dads doing the same thing with snacks and shared more videos of snacking patriarchs.
Clearly people have noticed this distinctive dad habit way before being forced into isolation with their families, as evidenced by other videos posted earlier this year.
Commenters had their own theories as to why this happens.
“Gotta wake up the flavor,” one person wrote.
“So it doesn’t get sweaty in ur palm,” someone else commented.
Another person, who is apparently an amateur snacking sleuth, shared a clip of Tom Cruise from “Risky Business” doing the exact same thing, noting that this must be the reason as to why dads eat their snacks this way.
Someone else noticed this same dad habit and posted the question on Twitter in 2018.
Of course, this was the era before TikTok, so very little video evidence was presented at the time even though the tweet racked up over 7,000 likes and hundreds of comments.
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There were a number of interesting explanations as to the real reasoning behind the behavior.
“Loosens them up so they’re easier to pick out one by one. Also cools down the M&M’s from the hand warmth so that the food dye doesn’t stain your hands,” one person wrote.
“The shake brings them to the top of the hand as they had been sitting at the bottom of that hand cup,” another commented.
“So none get stuck and you get a clear shot without having to shake them in front of ur mouth,” said another.
These somewhat scientific summaries may shed a little light on this commonly observed custom, but the world may never know exactly why every dad is so compelled to always shake their snacks.