Yes, Food Noise Is Real and Measurable
One of the most important shifts in the approach to obesity in recent years has been an increased focus on the lived experience with this disease. One result has been the identification of food noise as a subjective experience that greatly affects the quality of life for many people living with obesity. Now, new research tells us that food noise is not only very real, it is also measurable.
A new paper in Obesity describes the development and validation of the Food Noise Questionnaire. Until now, researchers had no reliable means to measure the experience of food noise. This new study is the first ever to develop and validate a tool to do just that.
The authors tell us the FNQ is a brief, practical, and psychometrically valid tool for researchers and clinicians to measure food noise.
Further research will be necessary to determine exactly how useful it is.
An Important Step
Emily Dhurandhar is an obesity researcher with a deep interest in this subject. Though she was not involved with this study herself, she tells us the research is quite valuable:
“This scale is an important step to measuring food noise and validating that the construct exists.
“It’s good to see that food noise is similar, but distinct from preoccupation with food – a known, long-standing feature of disordered eating. Future research will need to also verify that food noise is not simply a marker of other constructs associated with disordered eating. It would also be good to verify it does not reflect participants answering questions in a socially desirable way.
“Finally, it will be important to see that the field more broadly agrees that the scale represents all the critical facets of food noise. In other words, is it useful for predicting future outcomes of clinical interest?”
Measure and Manage
It is tough to manage or treat a condition without a means to measure it. So indeed, making it measurable is an important step toward explaining the relief people are reporting from food noise when they take GLP-1 agonists. Ultimately, it may help with providing such relief to more people who need it.
Click here for the new publication, here, here, here, and here for further perspective.
I’m Thinking Arby’s, photograph by Michael Hicks, licensed under CC BY 2.0
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January 22, 2025
January 22, 2025 at 9:20 am, John DiTraglia said:
Dwelling on and obsessing about food is presumably a normal and functional adaptation to weight loss. People with anorexia, although they can resist it, also think constantly about food.