Science Doesn't Really Know What Food Noise Is

In my practice there’s an activity I use with clients to help me get into their head. I’ll take some food with me to our session; a piece of cake or a packet of crisps, a doughnut or a cinnamon roll. Something I know will get a reaction. I put the food down on the table in front of the client and hand them a pad of Post-It notes. I ask them to write down every thought they have about the food; each thought on a new note. 

By the end of the exercise the table is covered in these notes. The resulting picture is an emotional waltzer; I feel dizzy reading all the spinny thoughts my client has regurgitated onto paper: ‘fat’, ‘disgusting’, ‘delicious’, ‘guilty’, ‘CARBS!’, ‘joy’, ‘fun’, ‘unhealthy’, ‘sugar rush’.

Desire, panic, fear, longing; it’s all there.  

Over a doughnut. 

I ask my client to read their notes out to me. We rarely make it through without reaching for the tissues. 

Seeing the contents of your brain like that is confronting. It’s painful. It’s hard work. 

I get why you’d want to make it stop.

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Another exercise: I give my clients a worksheet with the outline of two blank brains. I ask them to fill the first with the kinds of thoughts they’re having about food, exercise, and about their body. I ask them what proportion of their brain is taken up with thinking about those things. 

Eighty, ninety percent they tell me. 

I ask them to fill the second brain with the kinds of things they actually want to give headspace to. Creative projects, community, education, time with their kids and friends, rest. 

Food barely gets a look in.

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Back in the day we’d have called this the voice of the food police. Now we call it food noise. I’ll admit, I was annoyed I didn’t think of it myself; it has real cut-through.

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I have to concede that The Post-It note method is not a scientifically validated measurement tool for food noise. I have mostly lost faith in psychometric testing for reasons that are too boring to go into. But if you were that way inclined, you could rate your own food noise using one of the two tools that are in clinical use: The Food Noise Questionnaire (FNQ) and the Ro Allison Indiana Dhurandhar - Food Noise (RAID - FN) Inventory. 

You could bring your results to your doctor or show them to your spouse and say ‘LOOK! Do you believe me now?’

Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.

Either way, the tools were made up by weight-loss companies. (1)

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My job is not to silence food noise. 

My job is to help people find less harmful ways of coping with distress about food or their body.

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I find myself constantly thinking about food throughout the day

Strongly disagree 

Disagree

Neither agree nor disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree 

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There’s no standardised definition of food noise; it started trending on TikTok in 2023 when access to GLP-1 receptor agonist (RA) drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro became widespread. Almost immediately people reported that the near constant cacophony in their heads about what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat, stopped. 

The food noise went quiet.

It wasn’t long before The New York Times stuck their beak in: People on Drugs Like Ozempic Say Their ‘Food Noise’ Has Disappeared. And then, very quickly, it became a marketing term to sell GLP-1 RA drugs for weight loss. 

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Scientists are befuddled by food noise.

It’s all back-to-front, you see. 

Usually how it works is that researchers spend a long time developing theoretical and conceptual models from observable phenomena. Then they try to get a sense of the shape and texture of those phenomena. And then they cross-check it against different, already existing concepts to make sure they’re not just describing something we already know about. There’s a whole process; you can’t just fuck about and find out. 

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A new paper published in the journal Appetite highlights the conceptual, methodological, and ethical considerations of food noise – again, something that was popularised on TikTok –  in an attempt to make sense of the concept within the context of what we already know and understand about the psychological and physiological dimensions of eating. 

They’re trying to figure out if food noise is a new, discreet concept. Or just another way of describing something we already know about: food preoccupation, or food-cue reactivity, or food-related intrusive thoughts, or even food addiction (reader, I have feelings about the latter). Things that have been defined and researched and can be measured and have studies tracking them over time and space.

They also want to know if the tools that supposedly measure food noise actually measure food noise? 

Early evidence suggests not. The FNQ and RAID-FN questionnaires were built on vibes rather than anything one would recognise as considered science. They're giving marketing not diagnosing.