Food Noise Is Real, and More People Are Talking About It Than You Might Think

There is a type of mental fatigue that is not caused by stress at work or by a lack of sleep. This type of fatigue is caused by constant preoccupation with food. Not with being hungry, but with food 24/7. When people talk about this, they often describe it as being in a constant state of “food for thought”. They can be sitting in meetings, talking to friends and family, watching TV and all the time be thinking about food and eating. For some people this is how every Tuesday is. For others it is every day.

Food noise is being referred to in health circles to describe the internal chatter of constant thoughts of food that plague some people. This constant internal dialogue of thoughts of food and eating is not a problem of overeating due to greed or lack of willpower and cannot be managed by attempting to ‘think about it less’. This constant ‘mental chatter’ of thoughts of food is a well known problem which affects many people’s concentration, mood and overall quality of life.

Why It’s Suddenly Being Talked About

The phenomenon of food noise is one of the few health phenomena that is starting to receive proper conversation in the mainstream, with the reason that semaglutide-based GLP-1 medicines have had the profound effect of silencing the mental chatter of food in addition to the well publicized effect of reduced appetite and associated weight loss in users of these drugs. They have forced a new question on health on the market however: why do some people’s brains continue to nag them constantly for food, whilst others are completely silent on the subject until they are actually hungry.

The reason for food noise is complex and involves the brain chemistry of the individual, stress hormones, sleep patterns and eating history. For some people their brain is simply hard-wired to look for food and this could be down to the way they have been brought up and how they have eaten in the past, i.e. food has been scarce or used as comfort.

If you are interested to find out more about food noise, the Day Lewis pharmacy team have put together a nice summary of what is thought to cause food noise and ways in which it can be managed. Note though, that this isn’t going to be a guide to sorting out food noise once and for all!

It’s Not Always About Weight

So many people conflate food noise with being overweight. A lot of slim people experience food noise as well as some athletes who are fixated on their macronutrient intake, and for people with a history of disordered eating, food noise can often be the loudest of all and is often connected to attempts to control or restrict eating in some way. This kind of mental load is exhausting regardless of whether or not you are of a healthy weight.

This greater production of cortisol (the ‘stress hormone’) can also make us crave higher calorie foods and thus create more of a problem than already exists. But this is just our bodies doing what they have evolved to do – to ensure our survival in times of stress. It doesn’t mean we’re failing or weak in some way.

What Actually Helps, and What Doesn’t

While everyone agrees that willpower alone is no good, the most common approach to tackling food thoughts is to tell people to eat less. Many health articles suggest that managing food thoughts is as simple as cutting down on the amount of food that you eat. However, having regular meals with a sufficient amount of protein is the best way to reduce food thoughts in the long run. Rather than cutting down on meals in order to try to cut down on calories, the food thoughts actually will get louder throughout the day.

Poor sleep consistently raises your ghrelin levels (the hunger hormone) and lowers your hunger-sating hormones. This means that the constant mental chatter about food that you experience on a daily basis can increase dramatically after a poor night’s sleep.

As for mindfulness of food thoughts being helpful, yes it can be for some people but not in the way that they expect. They expect to sit quietly and alleviate their food obsessive thoughts. In fact the opposite is usually the case and it can become even more overwhelming for them at first.

There is much more to be discovered about the topic of food noise. In the meantime, the simple fact that it is being discussed is something to be celebrated.