Google the term food noise, and you may well end up at foodnoise.com, a domain owned by a prescription weight-loss medicine called Contrave. According to Contrave, food noise (or FOOD NOISE, its branded boogeyman) is “more than just your hunger talking—it’s constant, intrusive thoughts about food. It can be disruptive to daily life and makes sticking to a healthy diet difficult.” On the site’s landing page, a woman—presumably on Contrave—stands behind a kitchen counter, confident that she won’t touch the bag of cookies labeled “comfort” in front of her.
When I think about food noise, I’m flung back to the height of my eating disorder, when I was paralyzed by the thought of eating anything at all. I ruminated constantly over off-limit foods, and my hunger always won as I binged, then purged.
When the roar of physiological hunger is ignored, the body becomes desperate, untrusting that it will ever eat again. Caloric and nutritional deficits can lead us to experience brain fog, irritability, and fatigue, our minds turning towards obsession, irritability, anxiety, and aggression. Anything to get us to listen. Focused on deprivation, our bodies push us towards food.
Even if food noise presents as an isolated battle within each of our psyches and pantries, it has found mass resonance within the American consciousness. In 2021, 10 years after I initiated the work of eating-disorder recovery, the FDA’s approval of the semaglutide Wegovy for weight loss led to dramatic results for scores of patients; users paid up to $1,350 for the privilege of proclaiming their food noise gone. When, that same year, the UN voted to declare food a human right, only two countries voted against that resolution: the US and Israel.
Maybe the denial of food as a human right makes sense in America, where so many of us do not know nourishment, only convenience. Items subsidized by our government—such as those made from soy, corn, and sugar—keep us hungry, even as our national body mass index rises.
Regardless of the number on our scales, or of our individual eating-disorder histories, thinking about food isn’t a pathology—it’s a normal hunger signal. Instead of acknowledging rumination and obsession as symptoms of disorder, we feed denial, telling ourselves that if we can just overcome and control the chatter in our brains that makes us desire food, we’ll have “cured” ourselves. But of what?
Open TikTok, and you’re likely to be instantly confronted by a video detailing everything a stranger has eaten in a day. Another video will tell you that the brand of peanut butter you’ve been eating since childhood will kill you. More videos will feature bodybuilders talking about protein, or tradwives making ricotta from scratch. There is so much noise on social media about what to eat and what not to; is it any wonder that we’re so willing to outsource authority over our hunger and fullness cues to anyone willing to jump in and tell us how to sustain ourselves (or not)?
Comedian Jenny Zigrino struggled with endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder when her doctor presented her with two options: a hysterectomy or GLP-1s. The choice was fraught, but worth it: “I’ve been able to stop my anti-depressant and my days of being bed-ridden with pain are nearly gone,” she tells me.
When Zigrino began her semaglutide journey, she turned to GLP-1 subreddits for support. Many focus on celebrating weight loss: r/WegovyWeightLoss showcases full body photos, comparing before and afters. In contrast stands r/antidietglp1, a more nuanced thread dedicated to anti-diet culture and body-liberation sentiment. Among posts about the many side effects of GLP-1s, the most commonly ignored symptom of semaglutide usage is discussed openly: anhedonia. Users share that not only did their desire for food disappear, but their capacity for pleasure went with it. They confide that now they struggle to feel anything at all—suggesting that when our physical bodies starve, so do our minds and spirits.
The unseemly facts of our bodies are noisy, but so are our deepest passions. In his newsletter, Paul Skallas reflects on his own experience with GLP-1s. There, he’s noted how “the same neural pathways that make you overeat also make you start companies, chase lovers, create art, take risks. Ozempic doesn’t distinguish.” When we lose our ability to feel our hunger, we can also lose our ability to access the fire within.
As the AI-ification of American life takes hold, maybe it’s not surprising that we’re cutting out sources of nourishment and pleasure—attempting to feel less and become more machine-like. Still, I wonder; what if the inability to hear out our hunger is a sign of illness, not wellness? What would we hear–and feel–if we only let ourselves?