An attempt by The New York Times‘ senior medical writer, Gina Kolata, to explain both the concept of “food noise” and how it is quieted by GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy results in more questions than it answers.

What food noise sounds like is obvious to most people. It is the desire to eat or drink that grows louder the longer one abstains. For some people, as Kolata shows, it never stops. They think about food all day, all night, and in their dreams. Often, when not thinking about food, they are beating themselves up for indulging.

The word “craving” never appears in Kolata’s article. Food noise is a form of craving, and it has been studied quite a bit. Cravings are the result of withdrawal. Indulgence satisfies the cravings, leading to a cycle of indulgence and withdrawal that can quickly accelerate to dependence and addiction.

Food noise results in stress. It’s very stressful to have one inner voice constantly nagging at you to indulge, while another inner voice berates you for indulging. The stress of dependence is layered on top of the many normal layers of stress, such as the stress of survival. Any stressful moment in life can lead to a binge-eating episode for some people if they use eating to displace stress.

Kolata refers to a metabolic “set point” that determines whether or not people experience food noise. Research shows that a loss of 10% of body weight triggers an incessant food noise: “they dreamed and fantasized about food.” All of the studies on GLP-1 drugs show an average weight loss greater than 10% of body weight, yet patients say the food noise disappears.

Kolata discusses the set point theory with Dr. Lee Kaplan, director of the Obesity, Metabolism, and Nutrition Institute (OMNI) at Massachusetts General Hospital, who explains:

Obesity results from the initial elevation of the set point to an abnormal level. 

Dr. Ania Jastreboff, an obesity specialist at Yale Medicine, told Kolata that the GLP-1 drugs appear to re-establish the set point at a lower level. They still get hungry, but not all the time. When they stop taking the drug, the food noise comes roaring right back, and the original set point is reestablished.

One of the doctors interviewed by Kolata astutely asks, “What’s the thing that sets?” In other words, a set point where, consisting of what, and manipulated how? As you can see, the set point theory generates more questions than it answers, even for the people who came up with it.

What appears to happen with GLP-1 drugs is that they disrupt the process of displacement, so that stressful situations do not lead to excessive indulgence. When an activity such as eating is used to relieve stress, it can become habit-forming. And it’s not just eating. Alcoholics have alcohol noise. Addicted gamblers have gambling noise. Even the compulsive desire to go fishing can be considered fish noise.

Kolata’s article ends just when it’s getting good. Any activity can become addictive when it is used as a displacement activity to relieve stress. In part, that’s because abstinence from the activity is itself a source of stress, on top of the normal stresses in life that often lead to indulgence.

GLP-1 drugs don’t stop the stress; they stop the displacement. They enable people to face the difficulties of withdrawal without resorting to indulgence. They do not stop people from eating, just from stress-eating or binge-eating. They appear to have a similar effect on compulsive drinking, compulsive shopping, compulsive gambling, and pornography addiction.

There’s a much bigger story to be had here. “That’s the million or billion dollar question,” says Dr. Daniel Drucker, a University of Toronto researcher who helped develop the first GLP-1 drugs decades ago. It’s the story of how stress leads to displacement and somehow that mechanism moves the set point, and how GLP-1 drugs disrupt that mechanism. It’s a big story, and we’re committed to telling it here at AddictionNews.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published May 8, 2026.

Sources:

“The Day the Food Noise Died,” The New York Times, April 27, 2027.

“People on Drugs Like Ozempic Say Their ‘Food Noise’ Has Disappeared,” The New York Times, June 21, 2023.

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