GLP-1s May Quiet ‘Food Noise’
How often do you think about food? Are you already planning your next meal? Are you dreaming of “treating” yourself to a sweet treat later this week? Are you feeling guilt or shame over your lunch choice today?
Human bodies are meant to think about food, and some people think about food more than others. However, in more extreme cases, people ruminate throughout the day about food and eating. This is known as “food noise,” which involves unwanted and unpleasant thoughts of food that are interfering with your daily life. Food noise is more than a craving or a thought—it’s “mental chatter” that can be a “psychological tug-of-war,” according to Tufts Medicine in Boston.
“Thinking about food is pretty normal. That’s part of life,” said obesity scientist Emily J. Dhurandhar, PhD, director of research special projects at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. “It becomes ‘noisy’ for some people and may detract from their quality of life and their well-being when it reaches a certain threshold. People describe something that’s distracting. It takes away from what they would prefer to be doing. It gets in the way of their ability to eat in a way that they would prefer for their health. It may even interfere with relationships.”
“Food noise” is not a clinical definition. It is not a diagnosis. And it’s not considered an eating disorder. It’s a fairly new term that is still being defined. However, eating disorder experts have reached out to Dr. Dhurandhar about her research, saying the inescapable rumination about food is also one way people with eating disorders describe their thoughts.
GLP-1 Patients Report Quieter Food Thoughts
Food noise has received more attention recently because some people taking GLP-1 medications have discovered they no longer think about food. They were surprised that their “food noise” has decreased or disappeared.
GLP-1 agonists—known better by brand names such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and others—were developed to treat type 2 diabetes. Some have also been approved to treat obesity.
Here’s how they work: GLP-1 is a natural hormone in your body. One of its roles is to trigger the release of insulin, which lowers the sugar in your blood. Too little insulin can lead to diabetes. GLP-1 agonists mimic the GLP-1 hormone by releasing more insulin to help people with diabetes manage their blood sugar. The medications also reduce hunger and appetite and slow down digestion, making you feel full longer.
As more people take these new medications, patients, clinicians and researchers are learning about other benefits as well. “There are some people on GLP-1s that seem to find that relief from the lack of the noise is very profound and life-changing,” Dr. Dhurandhar said. “There are others for whom it’s maybe not as noticeable.”
More food noise research is needed to understand why some people experience a decrease in food noise and others don’t, why and how food noise decreases, whether the level of food noise a person had before taking a GLP-1 medication matters, and whether the type of GLP-1 a person takes matters, according to Dr. Dhurandhar.
Early research has shown that GLP-1 agonists can alter cognitive function as well. That could include executive functioning (which is a set of skills that allow you to effectively organize and plan), memory and focus—which could also have a relation to food noise.
“We’re now understanding that GLP-1 receptors are expressed in areas of the brain involved in executive functioning, memory and planning,” Dr. Dhurandhar said. “A lot of what people describe for food noise is very much related to planning: rumination about what to eat, imagining what you could eat, getting distracted by apps related to food like DoorDash. It could be that these medications are affecting the executive functioning around food planning and food rumination.”
However, again, much more research is needed to understand these connections and how they work.
Despite the number of non-obese celebrities who seem to be on these medications, it’s important to remember that GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat type 2 diabetes or chronic weight management.
“We don’t know enough about how these medications are going to affect people’s nutritional status or their long-term well-being,” Dr. Dhurandhar said. “Taking them to manage thoughts about food would be a chronic thing. I think the idea is promising, but we need to study it carefully before people start taking them for that.”
New Tool Measures Food Noise
To better understand food noise, Dr. Dhurandhar’s research team developed a tool called the Ro Allison Indiana Dhurandhar-Food Noise Inventory (RAID-FN). The tool is a brief questionnaire clinicians can use with patients to help them measure their amount of food noise and how it affects them. Researchers can use the RAID-FN Inventory to continue to research food noise.
The tool was developed by a team of experts led by Dr. Dhurandhar and David B. Allison, PhD. While eating disorder-related measurements capture preoccupation with food, Dr. Dhurandhar said her team wanted to create something that was more nuanced and focused more in-depth on food noise. The tool includes 29 questions covering three key areas of food noise: cognitive burden, persistence and dysphoria.
