Food Noise, Part II: The Effect of the Food Environment (You’re Not Broken or Powerless)
This is Part II of a blog series that is based on the transcripts of my podcast series on Food Noise, which includes these 4 episodes:
Ep. 198: Food Noise, Part 1: Bingeing is Not a Solution
Ep. 199: Food Noise, Part 2: The Effect of the Food Environment (You’re Not Broken or Powerless)
Ep. 201: Food Noise, Part 3: Mindset Shifts for More Peace and Self-Trust
Ep. 203: Food Noise, Part 4: Eating Foundations for More Stability and Ease (with Marcus Kain)
In this post, I’m going to address an aspect of the food noise topic with the hope that this discussion will give you a better understanding of why food noise is coming up for you. I also hope it helps you have less self-blame and self-criticism when it does come up. The goal of what I’ll talk about here is to shift your perspective so that the food noise starts to feel like less of a threat and more like a natural, expected, and common response—but one that you absolutely can learn to overcome.
As a recap from Part I, I discussed what I believe is the most important thing to understand as you approach food noise in the context of binge eating recovery, which is that binge eating is never a solution to food noise. And in fact, bingeing makes food noise so much worse. I explained that you can learn to avoid acting on the urges to binge even if you have food noise, and that idea is the foundation for this series. You never want to feel powerless against bingeing because you struggle with food noise.
However, just because you can avoid bingeing when you have food noise doesn’t mean you want to stay stuck having a lot of food noise. Once you remove bingeing from the equation, you can start working on solutions; and actually, removing bingeing is a huge part of the solution to food noise. I believe that another part of the solution is simply a better understanding of food noise and even an acceptance around it—not in a way that you’re resigning yourself to it, but in a way that helps it make sense as far as why you’re having it. When you approach it with some acceptance and some self-compassion, you gain clarity, and it becomes much easier to implement solutions.
So here in this post, I’m going to help you with developing that understanding and self-compassion by talking about a factor in food noise that affects everyone. And that’s simply the food environment that we live in, particularly in developed countries.
Looking Beyond Yourself at the Modern Food Environment
Since the idea of food noise became popular, I think a lot of the conversation has suggested that there is something “wrong” with people who are having food noise. Then, the message is that they need to “fix” themselves, and the suggested fix is often a GLP-1 medication. I don’t think there’s enough conversation about why it makes sense that more people are having more food noise at this point in history.
The fact is that increased food noise is an expected effect of our modern food environment on our biology, and especially our modern food environment combined with the pressure to look a certain way. I’m not going to spend a lot of time here placing blame on any one thing like food manufacturing, marketing, social media, or diet culture. The point here is just to have you look outside of yourself to see the bigger picture and to stop blaming yourself for something that is a larger issue that’s affecting all of us.
If I had to sum up what I’m going to talk about today, it would be to not let the food environment make you feel like you’re broken, but also not to let the food environment make you feel like you’re powerless. There’s a middle ground here that I think is really important. We can acknowledge that the environment around food, weight, and body image has developed in ways that have increased the tendency for us to struggle with food noise. We can acknowledge that some of us are more sensitive to this environment than others because of our upbringing, genetics, and many other factors; but we can still hold onto the truth that we can learn to determine our own actions within the context of this challenging environment.
The message here is not, “well, of course it’s hard, so just deal with it.” The message is about having compassion for yourself first and foremost for the situation that you’re in, and then developing a greater understanding of the factors at play so that you can respond more skillfully, instead of thinking you’re at the mercy of those factors.
If you’re fortunate enough to live in areas where food is abundant, highly stimulating food can feel like it’s everywhere. It’s in the gas station, at events, on your phone, on your TV, in ads, and it can be delivered to your door in minutes. It’s engineered to be highly rewarding. It’s packaged in a way that grabs your attention. It’s talked about constantly, either as entertainment or in marketing as something you “should” desire, and it’s also talked about as a problem to be solved. There’s just a lot of focus on food out there, and there’s a level of food reward that our biology didn’t necessarily evolve for.
How Body Image and Restriction Can Amplify Food Noise
We also live in a culture that’s extremely focused on the body’s appearance and weight, so then all of this highly stimulating food out in the world becomes the enemy in a way. It becomes something to forbid yourself from having and something to criticize yourself for wanting. Food becomes this loaded thing, and eating can feel like it’s constantly tied to whether you’re good or you’re bad—and that’s definitely a recipe for mental preoccupation. It’s well researched that having rigid food rules and forbidden foods tends to increase food cravings and food thoughts and obsessions. To sum this up, we’re in an environment with a lot of already appealing foods that are manufactured to be more stimulating, and then we’re inundated with messages telling us that we should not eat those foods, which can have the unintended effect of amplifying the appeal of those foods.
When you step back and look at this, I hope that it helps you stop jumping into “something is wrong with me” when you have food noise. It may simply be that your brain is responding to an intense environment the way a human brain is supposed to respond to stimulation, reward cues, and also restriction. Here I want to acknowledge that all of us have a different experience with this. I think there are a ton of messages out there blaming food manufacturing—saying that we’re all victims of this overstimulating food environment. And yes, that has some level of truth in various degrees for each of us when we’re comparing the world we live in to an ideal world. But some people exist in this environment without it creating any major issues. I hear this a lot from recovered people (and I’ve definitely experienced this myself) in that when you stop viewing food as forbidden, nourish your body, stop the restrictive dieting, and stop the bingeing, all of this highly processed and overstimulating food loses a lot of its appeal.
I now look at something like, let’s say, the candy aisle at a grocery store and mostly just think, “yuck.” Genuinely, it just doesn’t look that good to me. There are certainly desserts, sweets, and processed foods that I absolutely do enjoy, but some of this “food” that really isn’t even food does the opposite for me now, so that instead of creating temptation, it creates a lack of interest and even aversion. And maybe people who have never been on restrictive diets and who have had a healthy upbringing around food may have this reaction from the start. I just wanted to mention that because there are so many messages today—especially from the fitness and health influencer world—saying that these highly processed foods are like “drugs.” But in contradiction to that, some people just aren’t that attracted to them, some people overcome their attraction to them, and so many people eat them without a problem. I’ll add that these people don’t eat them because they feel “powerless” against their cravings; they eat them because the world is set up in a way that eating them is sometimes the most convenient or cost-effective choice, or they simply don’t have a choice for various reasons.
Food Noise Does Not Have to Be Inevitable
When you look at the fact that the environment does tend to create noise, have compassion for yourself, but also look to these examples that I’ve mentioned to help yourself believe that it’s not inevitable to struggle. Some people who used to have noise don’t anymore, even though the modern food environment has not changed. When you think food noise is inevitable, or you put a lot of attention on the messages saying that certain foods are like “drugs,” it can serve to make the food noise even worse. When you go into eating a food with the expectation that you’ll respond like a drug addict and that you’re powerless, you’re going to interpret the desire the food may create as a threat, and that can activate your nervous system, amplify the desire, and make you feel more powerless.
All of this is to say that yes, the noise that the environment creates is real, and it affects some people more than others; but the messages telling us that “certain foods are like drugs” can be another part of the food environment that may be making things worse for you.
This is where I’m going to go down a path in this discussion that might be slightly sensitive (and it’s an adult topic), but to explain the environment’s contribution to the food noise, I think it’s a lot more helpful to compare addictive issues in our culture surrounding food to addictive issues surrounding sex, rather than making that comparison to drugs. When we think about drugs—and here and I’m talking about drugs used for non-medical purposes—they are something we don’t need to face on a daily basis. Having drugs that are not for a medical reason is not a true need. Stopping an addiction to drugs is very difficult and takes courage, but people do accomplish this, so as a little aside…even if we do compare eating certain foods to drugs, that still does not mean we’re powerless because people do end their drug addictions.
That being said about drugs not being true needs, on the other hand, food and sex are true needs. Food is more immediate as far as something we truly need to do each day to survive, but sex is also a need in terms of the survival of our species, and most of us feel pulled toward it as a need to varying degrees in our lives. People often tell me they wish they could just stop eating like a drug addict can stop taking drugs, because the idea of facing food each day feels daunting. It can almost feel easier to be a drug addict at that point, with the opportunity to just quit the substance cold turkey. So that’s where my suggestion comes in to stop seeing it as similar to a drug addiction and seeing it as more similar to a sex addiction because eating and sex are both behaviors that you don’t stop entirely even when you stop the addictive behaviors.
Comparing Food Addiction and Sex Addiction in the Modern Environment
I’m going to go somewhere with this comparison as far as the food noise, but as a background to what I’ll discuss, it helps to recognize that the treatment for a sex addiction or porn addiction would never be a lifetime of abstinence from sex. With addictions that surround true needs, it’s about finding or rediscovering the healthy part of you that can fulfill your needs in a satisfying way, without harming yourself or others. Sex or porn addiction recovery and food addiction recovery are not about never finding pleasure in that activity again. It’s about learning to overcome the unhealthy noise and the unhealthy urges and engaging with food or with sex in a way that feels aligned with you and that nourishes you.
So getting back to the topic of food noise, when we consider our modern food environment and how all of the overstimulation has created a lot of food noise, that can also lead us into thinking about other ways that our modern environment is overstimulating us. Sex is one of the biggest examples of this, in that our modern environment has created something maybe we could call an overabundance of “sex noise.” That’s not an official term as far as I know, but it’s a way of describing how the modern world can overstimulate another natural human drive.
We’re living in a time where sexualized imagery and content are far more available than at any other point in history. A person can be exposed to sexual cues very frequently without even seeking them out, and then there are, of course, many ways to seek it out. All of this can possibly create more thoughts, more cues, more stimulation, more preoccupation, and for some people, it can contribute to compulsive and extremely harmful patterns surrounding these behaviors. There’s been more awareness about this in recent years—about how our hypersexualized world can hijack the brain to the point where normal sexual relationships feel dull or uninteresting, in the same way that maybe a normal meal feels uninteresting to people who struggle with bingeing.
Just like the food noise, this type of “sex noise” affects some people more than others based on various factors. I believe it’s likely harmful to everyone at some level, just like overstimulating food is harmful to everyone at some level. However, some people go through their lives not paying much attention to these messages and keeping a healthy relationship with their natural desires—or even having an aversion to these messages and content—while others get completely wrapped up in that world and it takes over their life, and they end up hurting themselves and others. It’s the same environment, but different reactions; and those differences, again, show that it’s not inevitable to struggle in an overstimulating environment. It shows that we’re not powerless, but it also makes it understandable why many people do struggle. Always remember that people can and do learn to exist in an overstimulating world without letting themselves go down unhealthy paths.
Desire and Temptation Do Not Necessitate Action
If you’re someone who struggles with food noise in this overstimulating environment and you don’t struggle with sex noise, this could be a really good example for you because the world is overstimulating us in both of these ways, but you’re able to ignore some of that noise, and it’s very possible for you to do the same with food. When we have an understanding of how certain factors in the environment affect us and create noise in our minds, we can have compassion for ourselves and for the reactions that our brains have to all of these unnatural inputs—while still taking responsibility for what we choose to do about it.
Getting back to the sex noise, most of us who have been in committed relationships can agree that having increased sexual desire because of the environment does not make it okay to act on these urges outside of the relationship. Most of us wouldn’t say to a partner who, let’s say, cheated, “Oh, that’s okay. It’s just the modern world that we live in.” No, we would acknowledge that there is temptation out there, but that we still expect proper behaviors. The noise does not excuse betraying commitments, and it certainly does not excuse even more terrible behaviors in that realm. I know it can be a bit of an extreme example, but I think it’s one that most people understand and may have experience with at some point in their life—and I’m talking about the idea that desire and temptation can be present while you still stay true to a commitment. Basically, sex noise from the environment doesn’t necessitate acting on that noise. In areas where actions have harmed us in terms of relationships, we understand that very clearly. I think when we make the comparison to food, we can hold ourselves to that same standard in that we can keep our commitments to ourselves to nourish our bodies and to recover—even if there is food noise from the environment.
This comparison is meant to show you how our natural drives can sometimes get skewed by the world we live in, with some of us responding more strongly than others. No one is defective for having a brain that reacts to this unnatural environment, but we’re all responsible for our actions within this context. There’s actually another tie-in here that I was thinking about as I was writing this, in that the loud “sex noise” in our culture can include a constant focus on appearance, which contributes to negative body image in a lot of people. Then that negative body image can lead to dieting, restriction, and attempts to tightly control the body. Then that deprivation can trigger a very real survival response in the brain and body and make food more compelling, cravings more intense, and thoughts about food more persistent. In effect, the culture’s obsession with sex can actually end up creating food noise for a lot of people. This is just another example of why you need to have compassion for yourself for the food thoughts that you have. What you’re calling “your” food noise is not just a random personal defect. It can be the result of a whole chain of cultural, social, and biological factors.
Understanding Food Noise Without Giving Up Your Power
The point of recognizing the chain of factors that lead to food noise is not to say, “Well, then I can’t help it.” The point is to say, “Okay, this makes sense, and of course this is challenging for me. I don’t have to shame myself for being personally affected by the food environment, but I also don’t have to hand over my power or think my actions are outside of my control.” There’s a big difference between understanding why something is happening or why something is difficult and using that difficulty as a reason to give up.
It’s worth noting that in the past, before this level of constant stimulation, it was probably easier for many people to stay within healthy limits in a lot of areas. It may have been easier to stick to simpler foods when convenient, engineered, hyper-palatable food was not everywhere and available at all hours. It may have been easier to stay faithful to a partner when there weren’t constant cues and constant content. But just because something might be harder now in the world we live in does not mean it’s impossible. I want you to take away this balanced perspective: I want you to acknowledge that the modern environment can increase food noise and make it harder to feel peaceful around food, especially if you have a dieting history or you’re struggling with bingeing. I want you to give yourself some grace for the food noise that you experience. I want you to recognize that every period of history has had its unique challenges, and overstimulation is one of the challenges that we face. This is not to minimize anything that you’re going through, but I think sometimes perspective can help in that if you’re reading this and you’re lucky enough to have food abundance, start trying to generate gratefulness as you approach food, despite our food environment riddled with problems and despite the food noise.
In talking about gratefulness for food, I do want to mention that issues surrounding food noise can also bring up some social issues and issues of food access, and I don’t want to be insensitive to that. But this post is assuming that, at this point in time when you’re reading this, the food noise is in the context of you having food available. And to add even more self-compassion to this discussion, if you had issues with food scarcity in your past or any food insecurity, that has also been shown to make you more prone to food preoccupation and eating issues once food is no longer scarce. This is another way that our environment—or your past environment—can contribute to the food thoughts that you may be having now. Please don’t criticize yourself for having more food noise when your younger self did not even feel safe with food or didn’t know if you were going to be able to get enough. Your brain likely learned to prioritize food and find it even more rewarding than someone who did have food safety at home.
Seeing Your Food Thoughts in a Larger Context
Seeing any of your patterns from the larger perspective of the environment you grew up in and from the larger context of our culture can help you soften just a little bit around the food noise. It can help you take it less personally. It can help you to see it—not as a flaw within you—but as more of a result of what you’ve been through and all of the inputs around you. When you understand that, you stop making the noise a threat. You stop thinking, “this must mean something terrible about me,” and you start thinking, “okay, my brain is doing what brains do when they’re exposed to what I was and am exposed to, but I get to choose what I do next.” That’s the shift from feeling broken to feeling capable of experiencing the noise and deciding what to do in response.
When we stop fighting, resisting, and making every habitual thought and desire that runs through our minds so meaningful to us, we can start to rise above the food noise. This post is nearing its end, but I’m going to close this discussion—like I also did in Part I—by talking about the GLP-1 medications, because they’re so interconnected to conversations around food noise, and they’re a big part of why food noise is such a hot topic right now. I’ll always remind you that I’m not a doctor, and everyone needs to make medical decisions with their providers; but I do want to say something that relates to the point of today’s post.
In the GLP-1 era, the message can sometimes start to sound like, “none of us are capable of living in this food environment and we need to shut off the noise with medication.” I think it’s worth asking a gentle question here. With these GLP-1 medications, are we shutting off too much in terms of our natural desires and needs? The GLP-1s are often quieting more than just the harmful noise. They can often shut down appetite and desire in a way that can go beyond what may be healthy for someone. Those of you who follow my podcast know that I’m not completely opposed to the use of GLP-1s in all cases, and I think there can be ways to mitigate the risks. If you want to hear a more detailed discussion about this, you can listen to Episode 183: GLP-1 Medications, Food Noise, and Binge Eating Recovery with Marcus Kain. One of the many risks of these medications is too much suppression of the natural and healthy drive for food, which can be especially problematic in those with an eating disorder history.
Making Peace With Natural Appetite and Desire
Here I want to come back to the comparison I made earlier with food addiction and sex addiction. With someone who struggles with sex addiction or porn addiction, the answer is not shutting down the sex drive altogether. That would not be normal or healthy. The goal is to stop the harmful behaviors, to regain choice, and to regain control of the body and mind—while still allowing the underlying drive to exist. I think it’s reasonable to approach food and the drive to eat in the same way. We don’t want to build recovery by erasing desire and shutting down our natural appetite. We want to learn to make peace with our appetite, our desire for food, and the food environment as a whole without going into harmful behaviors. Wanting food is very natural, but as I’ve talked about throughout this post, the food environment and social pressure can cause this natural drive to get skewed.
When you have more acceptance around this and stop blaming yourself for the food noise, it’s a powerful starting point for change. When you stop reacting to the noise as if it’s dangerous, you stop intensifying it. When you learn to exist with your natural appetite and nourish yourself amidst the noise in today’s world, your brain can start to quiet down because it starts to feel safe. Then you’re in a better place to start working on helping yourself overcome any noise that remains.
This post has been more of a general discussion rather than a practical set of steps and actions, but the takeaway is an overall understanding of the situation that we’re all in, so that you can hopefully have less anxiety about the food noise when it comes up. You can start to recognize that you did not choose for this to happen, and there are so many factors that you can’t necessarily control that are at play. When you become a little more gentle with yourself when the food noise arises, it gives you more space and more capacity to learn to make different choices. With this perspective, you can start to be more intentional and self-caring even in the middle of a challenging environment, and you can begin proving to yourself that the environment does not have to dictate your actions.
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