interestingly! i found this 2026 article which actually validates my annoyance greatly! its not free to access, but i was able to get it through my university.
& wouldn't you know it, the company behind the ads that pissed me off are mentioned! and so is weight watchers!
There are currently two published instruments purporting to capture food noise. The Food Noise Questionnaire (FNQ; Diktas et al., 2025), is available for non-commercial purposes under a creative commons license and was developed in partnership with and deployed by the weight loss company WW International. The other is the proprietary Ro Allison Indiana Dhurandhar Food Noise (RAID-FN) Inventory (Dhurandhar et al., 2025, 2026) for which any use must be requested through the US telehealth company Ro. In late 2025, Ro began marketing the RAID-FN to consumers as a means for them to assess if they could benefit from pharmacological quieting of “food noise” to meet their medical or cosmetic weight loss goals. The RAID-FN has also been positioned as a tool for tracking patient progress and for licensing to pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials (Chen, 2025)
So its very clear that the weight loss industry is interested in this term. Ro (the company behind the Trisha Paytas ads) literally developed their own special "food noise" screening tool you have to get permission to use, and links "food noise" to not only medical need but cosmetic weight loss.
the article goes on to critique the FNQ and RAID-FN for being very similar to pre-existing questionnaires on food preoccupation or food addiction, to the point that it is unclear if these are even helpful or add anything. this paper talks about how extremely little is actually known about what causes food noise, or even if "food noise" is actually a newly-described phenomenon, although they do not dismiss that people are using "food noise" to describe a real condition they experience that warrants further study and care:
Given the current dearth of relevant basic research – including an absence of epidemiological studies – several steps are first required if food noise is to advance as a distinct and clinically relevant construct (albeit likely intimately associated with other previously described constructs such as food cue reactivity, food preoccupation, food-related intrusive thoughts, food cravings, external eating, and possibly even food addiction). [...]
Despite the distinction in the hypotheses underlying the definitions of Diktas et al. and Dhurandhar et al. (i.e., that food noise arises spontaneously, regardless of internal or external food cues) when compared to Hayashi and colleagues’ earlier definition, all three definitions arguably share fundamental aspects. This includes the unwanted and involuntary nature of food noise (food-related intrusive thoughts) and the potential negative impact on health and well-being, which align with reports of lived experiences in online testimonies around food noise described above. This seems a sensible starting point for exploring all these inter-related issues as evidence can be gathered to identify if a distinct construct is warranted and provides additional utility [...]
An instrument designed to capture an under-researched phenomenon like food noise should ideally demonstrate utility beyond already validated measures. Otherwise, it would be preferable to use an existing instrument or subscale (e.g., the food preoccupation with negative emotional valence subscale of Tapper and Pothos' Food Preoccupation Questionnaire) to standardize research methods and ensure comparability of findings (Mokkink et al., 2016). The FNQ, for example, exhibits a strong correlation with the Preoccupation with Food subscale of the Food Cravings Questionnaire–Trait (FCQ-T; r = .87; Diktas et al., 2025). Similarly, the RAID-FN questionnaire shows strong correlations with the overall score of the FCQ-T (r = .79; note that the preoccupation subscale was not analyzed separately) and a moderate correlation with a separate food-cue responsivity scale (r = .68; Dhurandhar et al., 2026). Such high correlations should not be interpreted as indicating agreement between instruments, rather they suggest substantial conceptual overlap, raising questions about whether the new tools provide unique information. This warrants future research using approaches such as calculating the intraclass correlation (ICC) between scores from the FNQ or the RAID-FN and existing measures of food preoccupation. Despite the fact that the RAID-FN's three-factor structure (preoccupation, persistence, and dysphoria) likely offers greater nuance than the single-factor FNQ, the methods employed in its development (as well as those for the FNQ) also raise questions about their reliance on informal observation of anecdotal data from media and expert opinions as theoretical bases for their understanding of the construct of food noise.
again. BOTH of these screening tools were made by weight loss companies, and you are not allowed to use the RAID-FN unless you get permission from Ro, and there is no evidence that they provide any information that is not already provided by pre-existing screening tools on similar food/hunger-related issues. and Ro specifically markets RAID-FN to consumers, including those interested in cosmetic weight loss. hmmmmm i wonder if there are, perhaps, some conflicts of interest at play here!
the section that really hits on the concerns i express above is "Food noise as pathology":
If we consider food noise as a distinct construct, then we also require better data and theorization to determine when food noise deviates from “normal.” That is, when do thoughts about food become noise? Diktas et al. 's (2025) FNQ definitionally rests on the requirement that food noise leads to disruptions that “make healthy behaviors difficult.” Dhurandhar et al.’s (2025) RAID-FN is based on unwanted thoughts that cause “harm.” Yet the field lacks evidence-based criteria for distinguishing “normal” from harmful levels of food-related thought, a necessary and ethical basis for developing instruments applied to pharmacological recommendations and patient tracking. In medicine, public health, and nutrition alike, definitions of health, weight, and “normal” have become so conflated with each other and with weight-related stigma that it is imperative to scrutinize all these definitions (Brewis & Wutich, 2019). In this context, it is easy to understand why “more” thoughts about food become readily assumed to be pathological, and labelled “food noise”, especially in the absence of empirical demonstration. It could be (following scholars such as Barsky & Borus, 1995; Dumit, 2020) that new technologies – in this case appetite-influencing pharmaceuticals – allow reclassification of previously normalized body experiences as pathological or redefine previously stigmatized body states as more morally acceptable, justifying greater medical intervention.
Definitional uncertainties surrounding food noise have both clinical and symbolic consequences. For example, the pursuit of a “healthy weight” through the quieting of “food noise” may normalize or legitimize behaviors that ultimately compromise health. An underexplored but documented concern is the emergence of severe malnutrition-related complications associated with GLP-1 receptor agonists, such as Wernicke encephalopathy (Fallows, 2025). At the same time, although these drugs have shown early therapeutic potential for binge-eating disorder (Radkhah et al., 2025), a condition strongly associated with obesity and characterized by recurrent binge-eating episodes without compensatory behaviors, emerging evidence also suggests that they may exacerbate or even precipitate restrictive eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa (Sagarino & Luciano, 2024, May 5–8). Another concern is the potential mimicry or reinforcement of anorectic and bulimic eating patterns (Jensen et al., 2025). Moreover, for a person dieting or recovering from a restrictive eating disorder, it is currently unclear what a measurable change in food noise would suggest. [...]
These ambiguities are not unique to food noise but reflect broader unresolved challenges in defining and distinguishing eating-related cognitions, behaviors, and lived experience. As recently noted by Levin et al. (2025), many psychological constructs related to overeating are diagnosed through overlapping combinations of questionnaires, behavioral tests, and patient histories, often lacking clear boundaries, differential validity, or established mechanistic distinctions. Existing constructs may therefore capture overlapping dimensions of appetite and eating behavior rather than discrete phenomena. In this sense, food noise may then represent just another overlapping construct in this conceptual space.
Moreover, individuals today can also become intensely preoccupied with food quantity and quality in response to abundant—often contradictory—nutritional advice, as well as widespread concerns about contaminants, synthetic chemicals, and micro- and nanoplastics permeating contemporary food systems (e.g., Barboza et al., 2018; Muncke et al., 2025). In these contexts, a relentless cognitive occupation with food and its safety can be read as a reasonable adaptive pattern rather than a pathology.
And, if food noise functions to define pathology, then a powerful symbolic counterpoint emerges: quiet or silence. This arguably legitimizes the ideal of the mental state that does not disturb, think too much, or desire too much (e.g., Joy et al., 2025). Food silence then potentially reflects both health and virtue: less hunger and fewer thoughts mean more self-restraint and related moral achievements. In short, potential unwarranted pursuits of food silence risk turning the emerging construct of food noise into a tool that potentially seeds stigmatizing ideas about diet, health, and bodies that already serve the market for weight management services (Brewis & Wutich, 2019).
These contradictions and concerns do not invalidate the phenomenon of food noise as potentially conceptually meaningful, particularly when it is carefully defined in operational terms within scientific research and its appropriate application. But this wider social science perspective illuminates its fragility as an analytical category, especially when detached from both theoretical models and sociocultural contexts. And greater attention to these issues widens the domains into which food noise research can subsequently expand, including social science.
from the conclusion of the paper:
Our core goal in this commentary has been to highlight the conceptual, methodological, clinical, and ethical uncertainties surrounding the emergent food noise construct. First, there is a need to ground the construct theoretically; second, to test whether the existing measures add anything beyond existing validated tools; third, examine how and why food noise varies across context, language, and social position. We suggest that clinical use should be done very cautiously until theoretical and methodological issues have been addressed. In Table 3 we synthesize unresolved issues identified herein and propose next steps. We also identify some examples of many and varied potential research directions this refinement of the food noise construct could support within and beyond clinical contexts.
In summary, all that is clear is how little food noise is understood. At present, food noise may be most productively understood as a potentially meaningful experiential vocabulary that warrants further empirical clarification rather than as a settled diagnostic or therapeutic target. In the interim, existing validated constructs and instruments related to food preoccupation, cravings, and cue reactivity currently provide a more established evidentiary foundation for clinical and research applications. Notably, advancing research in this domain has much wider scientific, medical, and social implications, as we have noted with examples in Table 3. Appetite research will be core to that agenda, hopefully advancing with both caution and curiosity, accounting for its likely complex character.
tl;dr can y'all get off my fucking back about this post and just admit that the weight loss industry has their grubby little paws all over this term? that is has been helpful in describing a real issue people deal with does not make this immaterial.
i am CLEARLY not the only person who has noticed these problems, & when weight loss companies who make profit off of making people feel the need to lose weight are funding dubiously useful screening tools for this concept, i think perhaps there are some actual issues here to be discussed.
