As party invitations fill our calendars and chocolate ads dominate our screens during the holiday season, the temptations to indulge can seem omnipresent and all too strong. But this year, a new phrase has taken over social media, giving a name to this type of distraction: “food hype.”
This trendy term could change the way people view weight loss, turning what has for decades been an internal battle of willpower into an external problem with biological and psychological roots that scientists are only just beginning to understand.
What has contributed to this shift is the widespread adoption of weight loss medications such as Ozempic. Given the way these drugs work, it’s no surprise that they calm thoughts about food: They mimic the hormone GLP-1, which makes people feel full, as well as slowing stomach emptying and increasing insulin production to control blood sugar. As a result, many users report a decreased desire to eat something sugary quickly. They focus less on the food and are therefore less vulnerable near the dessert table.
But the reasons people have adopted the term “food hype” to describe what was once considered merely a test of willpower are more complex. Dr. Travis Masterson and Daisuke Hayashi of Pennsylvania State University published the first study on food noise in the journal Nutrients Last year, it recommended that medical professionals adopt the term to describe increased susceptibility to eating cues, “resulting in intrusive food-related thoughts and maladaptive eating behaviors.”
While responding to cues to eat is normal — evolutionarily speaking, those who find food are more likely to survive and pass on their genes — people who experience food fussiness experience a situation “where it has become problematic and those feelings may be difficult to overcome.” And ideas,” Masterson said.
Hayashi, who conducts research on the term’s viral spread on TikTok, said the “food noise” took off last year, just as GLP-1 drugs were beginning to be prescribed more widely after the Food and Drug Administration approved several versions for use in other treatments. Lose weight in 2021.
While the name itself is new, the “food hype” relates to ongoing research by nutritional scientists into “food reactivity,” which looks at the way people respond, both mentally and physically, to food. For those with food fuss, it means getting excited or distracted by the thought of food and obsessing over the next meal or snack. While taking GLP-1, “people say they were surprised to learn that constantly thinking about food and obsessing over it is not normal,” Hayashi said.
This approach to eating and overeating is a huge departure from the usual weight loss scenario. Following a diet or abstaining from overeating has long been considered important for an individual’s willpower. If you give in to one or three icing sugar cookies, you have failed because you are weak.
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The white-knuckle approach is less effective when it comes to weight loss, according to Roy Baumeister, a psychologist and leading willpower researcher and advocate. In his 2011 book on the subject with John Tierney, he wrote: “Never equate being overweight with weak willpower.” Willpower cannot be better understood as a mysterious inner force to overcome vice. It is physical and biological, like muscles that wear down during use. Ironically, the mental effort required to resist a slice of chocolate cake drains the brain of the glucose — sugar — it needs to make good eating decisions, and makes you crave more sugar.
Baumeister offers some personal solutions for self-control power training: Don’t try to make more than one behavior change at a time, commit ahead of time to telling yourself you won’t eat candy at the office party before you walk in, and put in the work. To create habits that make healthy eating automatic so that willpower is only called upon in emergency situations.
But he admits that these personal breakthroughs have their limits. The food hype and the biological effects of GLP-1 drugs show that external factors play a big role in the way people respond to food.
“Historically, society has understood food control as a matter of willpower,” Hayashi said. “If you’re someone who overeats, people might say you have low willpower. It’s a mistake to think that food-related problems are a matter of willpower.” Masterson and Hayashi point to advertising, genetics, emotions, stress levels, social circumstances, and the ability to pay for expensive, healthy food as just a few factors that influence how likely someone is to overeat, even against their will. “All of this works synergistically to cause rising obesity rates,” Hayashi concluded.
Healthy eating advocates have pushed for system-level regulatory solutions to some of these external problems. One prominent advocate is nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy Jr. His “Make America Healthy Again” program promises to remove sugary drinks and foods with additives from school lunches, cut farm subsidies that make high-fructose corn syrup and refined wheat flour artificially cheap, and remove questionable chemicals from processed foods popular with children. .
Some of these overarching goals are admirable, some are impractical. Similar efforts have been tried in places like the UK, where a recent attempt to limit the sale and advertising of foods “high in fat, sugar or salt” has met with mixed results as major food companies simply reformulate their products and adjust their marketing campaigns. Such regulatory attempts reveal that good intentions and market realities do not always align, and cast doubt on the viability of a wholesale revolution in a food supply dependent on unhealthy foods. But more importantly, they didn’t get to the root of Americans’ weight problems.
While avoiding weight gain has long been considered a matter of personal willpower alone, the rise of food buzz shows that New Year’s resolutions are never enough: First we have to learn more about how eating and overeating really work.
Hannah Rowan is managing editor at Modern era Journal and Robert Novak Journalism Fellow 2024–25.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.
