The term “Food Noise” refers to near-constant thoughts of one’s next meal, what one will eat, and food in general.
These thoughts can be intrusive, babbling louder than anything else in one’s mind, which can at times lead to issues with focus, but also overeating: the internal pressure to seek out and consume more food can become overwhelming.
This is a colloquial term, not a clinical one, but it’s become useful for medical professionals at a moment in which GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs, like semaglutide (often sold under brand names like Wegovy or Ozempic) seem to quiet such thoughts, allowing folks who fixate on food periods of comparable mental calm and quiet.
Researchers in this space have been looking into “eating-related intrusive thoughts” and “food-related obsessive-compulsive behavior” for more than a decade, but the possibility that a whole lot of people might be struggling with not just an ability to defy a reflex toward eating, but may also be dealing with a persistent internal food-pushing cacophony, is relatively new—basically only arriving in mainstream medical thought with these drugs that seem to stifle or silence that noise.
Which makes sense, in a way, as the capacity to muffle the internal pressure to consume also points at the probable cause: it’s not food insecurity or a weak will or a craving for nutrients that drives many people to eat more food than they require to survive (in some cases to dangerous levels), but a lack of what are called satiation hormones—including GLP-1—which trigger a feeling of fullness and satisfaction after eating.
If these hormones are triggered, our bodies shift from “craving food” mode into “absorbing nutrients from what was just eaten” mode, our hunger signals disappearing and food no longer seeming as appealing. Even our favorite foods start to look unappealing to us at this point, because of our internal shift in stance from “crave” to “not-crave.”
This is thought to be a big part of why those aforementioned drugs help people lose weight as rapidly as they do, and they’re different from the natural version of this process in that the GLP-1 our bodies release only last for a few minutes (which is why we get hungry again a few hours after a meal), but injected semaglutide lasts for days, which means we feel satiated and fine—not craving food, not even really interested in our favorite meals—for long periods.
All of which is interesting in part because it helps us better understand the mechanisms at play for folks who experience various levels of food noise, and because it gestures at ways we might accomplish some of the same without pharmaceuticals (it’s been posited that adding a heaping dose of fiber to one’s diet might achieve some of the same effects, for some people, for instance).
It’s also interesting, though, because it draws clearer lines between our motivations and cravings, and our addictions and reflexes, many of which might otherwise be attributed to character traits or environment, despite being the result of natural variations in how we produce and respond to some of the hormones that orchestrate the operations of our gut and craving-related systems.