ECO2025: People Living with Obesity See Things Doctors Miss

New studies released yesterday at ECO2025 remind us doctors and other health professionals often miss things that are quite obvious to people living with obesity.

For one thing, there is the phenomenon of food noise. It’s very real for many people with obesity. For health professionals, it can seem a bit abstract.

Then there is the understanding of obesity itself. Research at ECO2025 today tells us that both people living with obesity may understand this condition differently from their physicians .

Real Experiences  with Food Noise

For some people living with obesity, intrusive and unwanted thoughts about food plague their lives. The are relentless for these people – whether they are hungry or not.

But in academic and medical circles, it went unnoticed until it became a hot topic in social media in the era of popular discourse about GLP-1s. Daisuke Hayashi and Travis Masterson analyzed the content of TikTok videos about food noise to understand how people experience it.

They found that the top content on TikTok about food noise tends to be an affirmation of this experience. Testimony that this feeling, these thoughts are very real. And they make the link to the relief that GLP-1 agonists have brought them from these uncomfortable experiences of food noise.

The lead author of this research, Penn State’s Daisuke Hayashi, says:

“TikTok can be an incredible tool for raising awareness, but it also has a downside. The abundance of content depicting anti-obesity medications as a solution for food noise is a double-edged sword.

This content might be reassuring to many people – telling them their experiences with this noise are valid, But Hayashi cautions that they might blur the line between normal feelings of hunger and the distinct experience of food noise.

Disconnects in Understanding Obesity

Then there is the understanding of obesity itself. Ximena Ramos Salas and colleagues interviewed 1,379 people living with obesity and also their physicians. They wanted to see how they understood obesity and their goals in treating it. They found big differences in both.

Physicians tended to discount the biological basis of obesity – in particular, the genetic basis for it. Patients pointed to genetic susceptibility as the top biological contributor to obesity. It was number seven on the list for physicians.

On top of that, physicians were more likely to think of obesity first and foremost as a behavioral and social problem. More so than they saw it as a biological problem.

This finding gives us a jolt. We never would have thought patients have a better appreciation than physicians for genetic susceptibility to obesity. But that just might be the case.

It was also the case that physicians seem not to appreciate the most important goals of their patients in seeking obesity treatment. Patients simply want to look and feel better. Physicians were more focused on heath-related treatment goals.

Ramos Salas points out that closing these gaps might be important for providing supportive, compassionate obesity care. In short, health professionals and advocates need to listen more to people who are living with obesity. They have insights no one else can provide.

Click here for the food noise abstract and here for the obesity perceptions abstract. For further perspective, click here and here.

Marilou Côté, Vicki Mooney, Angela Alberga, Nicole Pearce, Ximena Ramos Salas, and Ted Kyle; photograph courtesy of Angela Alberga from ECO2025

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May x, 2025