At the 2025 European Congress on Obesity held in Malaga, Spain, groundbreaking new research unveiled intriguing insights into the burgeoning dialogue surrounding "food noise" on the highly influential social media platform TikTok. This comprehensive analysis reveals that nearly half of the top 100 TikTok videos addressing this phenomenon prominently feature discussions about medications, particularly glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), a class of drugs widely prescribed for obesity management. These findings illuminate not only the power of social media as a platform for health-related information but also the complexities and potential pitfalls inherent in its unsupervised narratives.
Food noise is an emerging construct in the landscape of eating behaviors and psychological health, characterized by persistent and intrusive thoughts about food that can disrupt an individual’s relationship with eating. Defined theoretically by lead researcher Daisuke Hayashi and colleagues as “heightened and/or persistent manifestations of food cue reactivity, often leading to food-related intrusive thoughts and maladaptive eating behaviors,” this term has rapidly gained traction since its first appearances in media and clinical reports. This study specifically sought to understand how food noise is portrayed and discussed within the TikTok community, which boasts over one billion active users worldwide, predominantly comprised of children, teenagers, and young adults.
The surge in interest in food noise correlates strikingly with the rising popularity of anti-obesity medications like semaglutide (marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound). Google Trends data pinpoint a notable spike in search and content creation activity around food noise starting in 2023, peaking in April 2025. This temporal overlap suggests a link between the public’s curiosity about managing intrusive food cravings and the visibility of pharmacological interventions promoted both within medical channels and through social media influencers.
Researchers extracted and analyzed the 100 most viewed TikTok videos under the hashtag #FoodNoise on June 24th, 2024, removing one duplicate. These videos garnered an astounding average of over one million views each, with high engagement metrics including thousands of likes, comments, and shares. This data reflects the immense reach and potential impact of these short-form videos in shaping perceptions and attitudes about food noise, eating behaviors, and medication use among a large and impressionable audience.
Demographically, content creators were predominantly female (92%), largely over the age of 30 (82%), and predominantly White (86%). Intriguingly, about 20% of these creators identified as healthcare professionals, yet patient testimonials constituted nearly three-quarters (71%) of the videos. This blend of lived experience and professional insight offers a complex mosaic of narratives, where personal struggles with food noise and its management often intersect with clinical perspectives and endorsements of pharmaceutical options.
The portrayal of food noise in the analyzed TikTok videos was overwhelmingly negative; 86% characterized it as a distressing condition that significantly diminishes quality of life. This framing underscores the psychological burden and functional impairment reported by individuals suffering from food noise, lending credence to the growing recognition of this phenomenon as a distinct clinical and social issue warranting further investigation and intervention.
Pharmacological management emerged as a prevalent theme, with approximately half of the videos citing medications as a strategy to combat food noise. Among these, a striking 92% referenced GLP-1 receptor agonists, indicating that these drugs have become synonymous with attempts to silence or moderate intrusive food-related thoughts. The emphasis on medication raises critical questions about the translation of medical treatments into self-care practices, particularly in youthful audiences who may lack the nuanced understanding required to distinguish between pathological food noise and normal hunger signals.
An alarming finding revealed that only 5% of videos disclosed sponsorship, despite the widespread presence of promotional content. The potential for undisclosed advertising on TikTok highlights ethical and regulatory challenges in digital health communication. Viewers may be exposed to biased information framed as authentic personal narratives, blurring the borders between education, anecdote, and marketing. This dynamic risks fostering unrealistic expectations and dependency on pharmaceutical solutions among vulnerable populations, especially younger users.
Lead author Daisuke Hayashi cautioned about the dual-edged nature of TikTok’s role in this domain. While the platform provides a unique space for individuals to share their experiences and foster supportive communities, it simultaneously harbors risks associated with misinformation and over-medicalization of normal food-related behaviors. The nuanced differentiation between pathological food noise and everyday hunger and appetite remains poorly understood outside expert circles, complicating public discourse and possibly exacerbating disordered eating trends.
This investigation into TikTok’s content landscape around food noise serves as a vital first step in mapping how emerging health-related constructs proliferate through social media ecosystems. The research advocates for more comprehensive studies exploring lived experiences beyond online platforms to deepen understanding of food noise’s psychological and behavioral impacts. Such future inquiries could inform tailored clinical interventions, public health messaging, and policies regulating digital health communication.
Moreover, the study implicitly challenges clinicians, researchers, and policymakers to engage proactively with social media dynamics to counteract misinformation and promote balanced, evidence-based perspectives about eating behaviors and pharmaceutical interventions. Given TikTok’s prominence among youth, educational initiatives designed to enhance media literacy and foster critical consumption of digital content appear urgent in mitigating potential adverse effects on food-related cognitions and health outcomes.
In an era marked by the rapid evolution of social networks as health information hubs, this research elucidates the pressing need for vigilant oversight and innovative strategies to harness these platforms’ benefits while curtailing their inherent risks. The case of food noise and GLP-1RA discussions on TikTok exemplifies how novel psychological phenomena can intersect with pharmacotherapy in the public imagination, reshaping conceptions of hunger, craving, and mental wellbeing.
As this digital discourse unfolds, allowing authentic patient voices to be heard alongside rigorous scientific evidence will be paramount. Balancing hope offered by new medications with caution against overreliance and misunderstanding emerges as a critical public health priority. This investigation thus not only maps an emerging social phenomenon but also soundly grounds it within a clinical and behavioral health framework, setting the stage for informed future dialogues around food noise and its management.
Subject of Research: Social media portrayal of food noise and the use of anti-obesity medications (GLP-1 receptor agonists) on TikTok.
Article Title: Not provided in original content.
News Publication Date: 13-May-2025
Keywords: Food noise, TikTok, GLP-1 receptor agonists, anti-obesity medications, social media health communication, eating behaviors, intrusive food thoughts, semaglutide, tirzepatide, patient testimonies, misinformation, digital health literacy.
