food noise

noun

Etymology

By a metaphor in which mental preoccupation is portrayed as noise inside one's head that cannot be turned off, somewhat like an earworm. Widely used since the early 2020s, when indications for using the GLP-1 receptor agonist medication class expanded beyond diabetes treatment into weight control for anyone with or without diabetes; not in widespread use before that. Attested since 2007.

Definitions

1
A mental preoccupation with food that is differentiable from hunger and from cravings but…
A mental preoccupation with food that is differentiable from hunger and from cravings but tends to urge people to overeat.
- As more and more people took the drugs, stories spread about “food noise,” and researchers started looking even more closely at what was going on in the brain.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for food noise. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA