TOPLINE

In a nationally representative survey of US adults, nearly 1 in 5 said they experience "food noise", a lay term for frequent thoughts about food, often or always, and about half said they experienced it at least sometimes. Rates were higher among non-Hispanic Asian participants, younger adults, women, and those reporting loss of control over eating.

METHODOLOGY

• Although "food noise" has exploded in social media and GLP-1 conversations, researchers still disagree on what it is, and the share of US adults who say they experience it had never been measured.
• Researchers performed a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data collected online in May 2026 from a nationally representative sample of 1000 US adults through the Society of Behavioral Medicine Omnibus Survey.
• Participants answered a single plain-language question on how often they experienced “food noise”, described as "constantly thinking about food, even when not hungry" or feeling like one's life revolves around food. Response options ranged from never to always, and answers of often or always were classified as frequent food noise.
• To make the results reflect the US population, the researchers weighted the data to match national benchmarks for key demographic, geographic, and political characteristics.
• The team examined how the frequency of food noise varied according to demographic characteristics, GLP-1 drug use, eating and weight-loss behaviors, diet quality, and physical and mental health.

TAKEAWAY

• About half of participants (50.89%) said they experience food noise at least sometimes, including 32.91% who said sometimes and 17.98% who said often or always.
• Frequent food noise was more common among women than among men (22.70% vs 12.68%); it was also more common among adults aged 18-29 years (26.50%) and non-Hispanic Asian participants (32.22%; P < .05 for all).
• Frequent food noise was far more common among people who reported loss of control over eating in the past month (56.77%) than in the sample overall (17.98%). Rates were also elevated among those who ate less to influence their weight or body shape (27.84%) and those who tried to lose weight in the past year (24.33%).
• After adjustment, loss of control over eating showed the strongest association with more frequent food noise (odds ratio [OR], 5.95). Current GLP-1 drug use (OR, 1.60), non-Hispanic Asian race and ethnicity (OR, 2.19), cutting back on eating to influence weight or body shape (OR, 1.57), and female sex (OR, 1.47) were also independently associated.

IN PRACTICE

"The strong co-occurrence of reported perceived food noise with loss-of-control eating, restrictive eating behaviors, poorer mental health, and lower self-rated diet quality collectively suggests that people who experience psychological and behavioral burdens around eating are more likely to believe they experience food noise more frequently," the authors wrote.

"Regardless of what food noise actually is or how it should be measured as a patient-reported outcome measure in studies or clinical settings…estimating the proportion of US adults who believe they experience food noise (in other words, endorse using the term food noise to describe their experiences) provides valuable information to gauge the magnitude of this phenomenon — whether it represents a unique construct or is a term people found to convey experiences already captured by other constructs that are otherwise hard to describe," they added.

SOURCE

The study was led by Daisuke Hayashi, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania. It was published online as a Short Communication in Obesity Science & Practice.

LIMITATIONS

The cross-sectional design could not establish cause and effect. The survey relied on single questions instead of validated measures, including a plain-language item for food noise and a self-rated item for diet quality, and participants were left to interpret behaviors like loss of control over eating on their own. The dataset did not include participants' body weight or history of weight cycling.

DISCLOSURES

The authors did not report any funding and declared having no conflicts of interest. Verasight provided access to the database free of cost to attendees of the 2026 Society of Behavioral Medicine meeting.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.