We Need To Talk Again About Ozempic and Food Noise
We Need To Talk Again About Ozempic and Food Noise
Blame Oprah if you must. But let's please stop blaming each other.
On the cusp of the New Year,
(who you’ll hear from more on this Thursday’s podcast!) published a New York Times Opinion essay titled “What if ‘Food Noise’ Is Just… Hunger?” (gift link). Kate argues that “food noise” — a concept that had attracted over 1.8 billion views on TikTok as of last summer—is “a slick rebrand” by proponents of the new class of weight loss drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy “of some of the most basic human drives: hunger, appetite, craving [...] now these are being framed as bugs, rather than features.” Emphasizes Kate: “We should resist this reframing.”
The New York Times no longer runs comment sections on guest essays, which means the discourse around Kate’s piece happened in the belly of the diet culture beast otherwise known as TikTok. And the response has been swift and furious: “[This is] like telling an alcoholic they’re just thirsty.” “Food noise is [a] constant and distressing focus on food regardless of satiety.” “You have no concept of what food noise is. It’s literal hell. It’s not planning ahead. It’s being flooded with thoughts of food nonstop all damn day.”
I’m not surprised by these responses, because many of you shared similar thoughts when I wrote about food noise last year. But I want to try again to have this conversation because I am starting to suspect that in continuing to relentlessly debate what is and isn’t “food noise” — we are all being played.
