Debunking Food Noise in the Age of Ozempic
If you’ve scrolled social media lately, chances are you’ve seen the phrase food noise everywhere. What started as a clinical description of disordered eating patterns has now been rebranded and mainstreamed in the age of Ozempic. Hunger itself is being sold back to us as a pathology — a problem to be fixed, medicated, or suppressed.
But here’s the truth: thinking about food isn’t wrong, and hunger isn’t a malfunction. In this episode of The Millennial Body Image Project, we unpack what “food noise” really means, how diet culture and marketing hijacked the term, and what’s actually happening when you feel like food is taking up too much mental space.
What Even Is Food Noise?
Originally, food noise was used in eating disorder work to describe intrusive, obsessive thoughts about food that stemmed from restriction or binge/restrict cycles. But in recent years, the diet industry has co-opted the term. Now, anything from normal hunger cues to the simple thought of “What’s for dinner?” is being pathologized as food noise.
The marketing is brilliant — it convinces people that if they think about food at all, something is wrong with them, and that suppression is the solution.
The Real Roots of Food Noise
Food noise often isn’t about a broken brain or faulty willpower. It’s about:
Restriction: Dieting is the fastest way to create food noise. The more you restrict, the louder your thoughts get.
Conflicting nutrition advice: Every diet you’ve ever tried stacks “rules” in your head. Kale is good in one plan, bad in another. Steak is healthy one year, harmful the next. No wonder you stand in front of the fridge overwhelmed.
Hunger suppression culture: We’ve been taught to celebrate restraint — skipping meals, ignoring hunger, pushing through. That cultural narrative makes normal appetite feel like a personal failure.
The Problem with the Ozempic Narrative
Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications suppress appetite. Instead of marketing that side effect directly, companies repackaged it: “It quiets your food noise.” Sounds comforting, right? But what it’s really selling is hunger suppression.
Suppressing your body’s cues might bring short-term relief, but it doesn’t address the root cause. And when the “noise-canceling headphones” come off, you’re left with the same confusion, cravings, and mistrust of your body.
Reframing Food Noise as Information
Instead of treating food noise as a problem to eliminate, what if we treated it as information? Your thoughts about food might be telling you:
You’re hungry (simple, but often dismissed).
You’re overwhelmed by conflicting nutrition messages.
You’re carrying the mental load of diet culture stacked across years of food rules.
You’re looking for comfort or emotional regulation.
When we decode food noise rather than suppress it, we move toward trust with our bodies instead of further away.
Takeaway:
Nobody wants to feel like feeding themselves is a full-time job. But the answer isn’t to silence hunger. It’s to recognize that food noise is often a symptom of restriction, stress, and cultural confusion. Your body isn’t broken — it’s trying to keep you alive.
🎧 Listen to the full episode of The Millennial Body Image Project: Debunking Food Noise in the Age of Ozempic.
