We Need to Talk About 'Food Noise'

Earlier this month, Michael Mosley’s wife Clare ‘debuted’ their son – Dr. Jack Mosley – in this video shared on Instagram. For those unfamiliar with the late Michael Mosley, he was a TV ‘doctor’ in the sense that he had a medical degree, but he didn’t actually ever practice medicine. He was also a weight-loss mogul, alongside his wife Dr Clare Bailey Mosley. Now it seems their son Jack – a GP registrar – is set to take over the family business with his new book: Food Noise.  

In the weird debutante video, Clare explains that Jack has ‘produced a book about food noise and the GLPs’. Jack goes on to say that ‘Food Noise is a book about silencing your cravings with the weight loss drugs’. He then goes on to say that it’s not just about the drugs, because there’s a real focus on nutrition and exercise; two things doctors are famously knowledgeable about. 

The book – which has endorsements by my two best guys, Chris van Tulleken and Tim Spector – is already an Amazon bestseller from preorders alone. So, buckle up kids, because we’re going to be hearing a lot about ‘food noise’ and a lot more from Jack when this book hits next month.

In the meantime I’d love to start a conversation about ‘food noise’ and the implications of branding our hunger, appetite, and desires as a pathology? As something that needs to be conquered, shut down, and silenced? I also wonder what it means to have yet another thin white man (doctor no less) telling, mainly women, to disconnect from our needs? How does this collude with, and amplify anti-fatness?

In her 2023 essay, ‘What if ‘Food Noise’ Is Just … Hunger?’, philosopher Kate Manne writes ‘we can see this trend as part of a perpetual devaluing of female pleasure and the shaming of women’s visceral appetites’. It’s giving misogyny and puritanism.