A Rigorous Validation of Food Noise Measurement

There are those who would tell us that the phenomenon of food noise lives only in the heads of people who find it distressing. Philosopher Kate Manne wants to turn it into a Gaslight phenomenon, telling us to “dance to it.” Philosophize it away. But with a new and rigorous validation of the RAID-FN scale, we now have yet another tool for measurement of this very real phenomenon.

Make no mistake. This is good news.

By definition, food noise is not something pleasant that makes people wish to dance. It is persistent, unwanted, and unpleasant. People who experience it cannot simply make it vanish with a positive attitude. The power of positive thinking, peddled in this context, is frankly a little insulting.

An Impressive Collaboration

This latest publication, appearing in Appetite, comes from an impressive collaboration of experts in multiple fields of study – nutrition, psychology, obesity medicine, and psychometrics. Ro, a direct-to-patient healthcare company, is contributing invaluable insights from interactions with millions of persons who participate in its healthcare platform. Accordingly, the RAID-FN acronym is shorthand for the Ro Allison Indiana Dhurandhar Food Noise inventory. Zach Reitano, CEO and Co-Founder of Ro, tells us:

“Patients share with us every day that persistent food noise makes it harder for them to lose weight, to reach their health goals. It often interferes in living their day-to-day lives to the fullest. Despite that, there’s been a lack of clinical or scientific legitimization of their experiences.

“With the RAID-FN scale, our patients and millions of others can finally better understand the food noise they experience. They can work with providers to manage it, and benefit from clinical research into its effects as well as potential treatments.”

A Foundation for Progress

David Allison is senior author on the validation paper in Appetite. He sees tremendous potential for scientific advances to come from this research program:

“Food noise has become an important topic in the field of obesity medicine and metabolic disease research. Yet it is one without the necessary rigor to produce reliable data and insights for patients, clinicians, or researchers.

“By working with Ro to develop the RAID-FN scale, we will help to unlock meaningful advancements in the scientific understanding of food noise and, hopefully, accelerate the discovery of effective interventions.”

Together with the work of the team developing and validating the FNQ measure, a robust foundation is building to support better insight into food noise. This is what progress, fueled by scientific curiosity, looks like.

Because we are a co-author on this new manuscript, this link will give you free access to the paper for the next 30 days or so. Furthermore, you can find the prior work of the RAID-FN team published here. And finally, we should mention that we are an independent advisor to Ro, which helped to organize and support this collaboration. You can find more from Ro about their involvement with this work here and here.

Food Noise, illustration created for ConscienHealth with Gemini image generation

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October 23, 2025