to think “food noise” is becoming one of those phrases people hide behind rather than actually dealing with their eating habits?

[foodywoody]

I keep hearing people say they have “food noise” and that’s why they’re constantly thinking about food or snacking, but isn’t that just hunger, boredom, habit, or emotional eating dressed up in a nicer label? I’m not saying it’s not real for some people, especially where there are medical issues involved, but the way it’s thrown around now makes it sound like no one has any control over it at all.

It just feels like another way to remove any personal responsibility. Not everything needs a label. Sometimes it’s just about eating properly and getting enough protein and actually addressing emotional eating.

I have a friend who I would say is slim and they never stop talking about food. They take on board all the latest health information and introduce new foods to their diet. I would imagine they have a lot of food noise. I don't know why it bothers people that a new expression explains how they feel or think about food. It will hopefully help them understand things a bit better and may lead to relief.

I had hypnotherapy for a phobia I had and it was very effective. I am currently under NHS care at a pain clinic and I am struck by how similar the methods to deal with pain are to my hypnotherapy. It's all about how your brain perceives things and trying to change it. I am not sure if it is working yet for my pain but I wonder having read this thread if it might help with food noise. Just sharing in case it is useful.

Oh yes maybe because I don't crave food constantly all day everyday I'm the anomaly.
I've never struggled with food, and yes I'm lucky! And there's clearly a lot of people that do suffer with it.

What are you suggesting then? Everyone (except me 🤣) has good noise and the ones that can't control it are what? Greedy? What is your point?

I've been on mounjaro since January. It doesn't eliminate the food noise, it turns the volume down to a manageable level for me. The noise at full volume is real and it's torture.

Not at all - I’m just wondering why it all of a sudden has to have a label when humans have enjoyed food for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I struggle with food noise myself btw and have done ever since I can remember - I’m not criticising anyone who struggles I just don’t see it as a condition - it’s just part of being human 🤷‍♀️

@sunflowersandsunsets but humans continue to gain understanding and insights. Hundreds of years ago there were no names for bacteria and viruses but they still existed! By defining them and understanding them, it became possible to treat them. For most people in this thread who have described "food noise" it is not enjoyment of food, it is something other than that - often anything but enjoyable. Why wouldn't we want to further our understanding of that?

Of course we can further our understanding but that doesn’t mean giving normal human conditions a label - not everything inconvenient or unpleasant has to be medicated against 😬

Why wouldn't it have a label? What's the point in walking about saying 'i have the issue where I constantly crave food to the point where it's so overwhelming I have to eat' when you could just say 'I suffer with food noise'

Shall we just scrap all labels and just start describing how everything feels from now on instead 😂

-I have this thing where when I eat certain foods that contain certain ingredients it causes me pain in my stomach. To help you work out what i mean it's I foods like bread and pasta. Can't tell you the name cos that's a label but hopefully you'll know what I mean'

'Do you mean you're gluten intolerant?'

' Yea but don't say that too loud people on mumsnet don't like labels'

For me it’s the equivalent of someone feeling anxious and claiming they have anxiety, or someone feeling a bit down and labelling it depression.

We aren’t robots - we’ll experience all kind of unpleasant or strange feelings in our lives but that doesn’t mean we all need to be given a label and prescribed injections because of it.

"Food noise" is like "limerence" -- a way to position one's own feelings as being more special than the same feelings as experienced by other people. "Cravings" was the established and boring term for food noise, just like "crush" is the established and boring term for "limerence".

Anyone who has a troubled relationship with food for any reason (a history of dieting, an eating disorder, a habit of eating too many carbs, etc etc) has food cravings. But when weight loss injections first became popular, people who posted about using them seemed very keen to represent their own food cravings as something different, something that indicated that the cravings were evidence that their weight struggles were profoundly different from other people's. So they used a different term meaning exactly the same thing - "food noise".

It was part of the narrative that seemed to be pushed by a lot of posters then: very overweight people were a distinctive minority whose weight problems were very different from other people's weight problems, and wholly the product of intrinsic factors (such as metabolic disorders or whatever). According to this narrative, no-one outside of this minority could possibly understand what their distinctive struggle with food was like, and everyone felt angry and resentful that very overweight people now had a means of losing weight more effectively.

This narrative seems to have subsided a bit now, I suppose because the drugs are being used by an increasingly wide range of people.

Of course it doesn't, that is not what I am suggesting @sunflowersandsunsets . Life has plenty of unpleasant and inconvenient things to be getting on with. Every morning I commute into work, I am reminded of that!

However, I am very pleased that we have continued to try and avert them! Everytime I have a hot shower, I thank goodness that the importance of cleanliness is now understood, the same when I brush my teeth, so that I don't get decay. Surely, it is good that we continue to progress and not just dismiss new evidence that comes to light as something we shouldn't define?

If you don't suffer from it, why do you need an opinion? It's a useful shorthand for people who are dealing with it.

I don’t buy the chocolate. I was just using the fridge example to explain how I experience food noise.

I don’t want to dismiss it, I just don’t agree that every single human feeling or struggle needs to be pathologised and medicated.

We seem to be going down a road where every single thing we don’t like is given a label and treated as some kind of abnormality and that’s the part I don’t agree with.

This sums it up perfectly imo.

Well in that case we shall agree to differ @sunflowersandsunsets . As a user of HRT, I am profoundly grateful that I don't just have to accept that menopause is just an inconvenient fact of women's lives that shouldn't be medicated or pathologised.

I was not suggesting you didn't have it. You were the one who told me I didn't know what it was from my own personal experience.

I asked you what you called it before as it is something that is now a marketing term, but has been around as long as humans - though no doubt worsened by our increasing reliance as a society on highly processed foods and UPFs, in my opinion.

I find you both rude and aggressive. Feel free to ignore my posts.

This. All this giving fancy labels and trying to pathologise every single last human feeling or drive we have is so bloody annoying! We’re animals at the end of the day. We have a very strong drive to eat food, food is everything to us. It’s what keeps us alive. If we don’t eat enough of it, our brain’s going to flood with thoughts of it because our body’s drive to eat to therefore stay alive, is the most important thing above all else, so it makes sense that thoughts of food and eating dominate your brain.

My husband has lost four stone plus on mounjaro, he said the same as you. He was always thinking about food, when was the next meal, he used to look at a plate of food and instantly say oh that won’t fill me up before he’d even eaten it.Now he rarely mentions food,leaves food on his plate when he’s full. It’s amazing to watch as I’m like your husband and only really eat when I’m hungry

Here’s an idea: don’t have the bar of chocolate in the fridge.

We all suffer from it. It’s called hunger

A recognised medical event like menopause can’t be compared to food cravings 😬

I think that before there was understanding of the menstrual cycle and hormone imbalances women were referred to as "hysterical" and in some cases institutionaised @Iatethelastbiscuit . Perhaps we should go back to dismissing women who get PMT or post natal depression and tell them to stop pathologising their feelings!!!!

No, of course that's not what people are talking about. It's literally not that in its definition: "Food noise refers to persistent, intrusive thoughts and mental chatter about food, such as constant planning, craving, or obsessing over meals, even when not physically hungry." (BBC)

You’re comparing two completely different things 🫣

So, food cravings then.

Like a PP said, we’re animals who need food to survive - thinking about our next meal and when/what we should eat literally hardwired into us as a species.