24th European Congress on Obesity (ECO2017), Porto, Portugal, May 17-20, 2017: Abstracts

The concept of ‘food addiction’ (FA) has stimulated a surge in research and debate in the scientific literature recently. Much research depends on the use of the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) to categorise individuals as ‘food addicts’. A systematic review found that YFAS ‘diagnoses’ are consistently associated with binge eating, warranting investigation into whether the YFAS is able to identify any unique ‘addiction-like’ qualities beyond those already accounted for by the Binge Eating Scale (BES). Methods: A large cross-sectional study of male and female UK adults (N: 667, minimum age: 18, mean: 26.27, SD: 11.05) was conducted between April 2015 and March 2016. The questionnaires measured a range of eating-related behaviours, consumption of alcohol and drugs, addictive behavioural traits and psychological wellbeing, including the Control of Eating Questionnaire, Power of Food Scale, Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (disinhibition subscale), Eating Disorder Examination (restraint subscale), Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Drug Abuse Screening Test, Addiction Prone Personality Scale, Beck Depression Inventory, World Health Organisation Quality of Life, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Perceived Stress Scale. Results: 7.6% of the sample met the YFAS criteria for ‘food addiction’ (N = 51) whilst the mean ‘symptom count’ was 1.88 (SD: 1.45). YFAS ‘symptom count’ correlated most strongly with BES (R = 0.66). The BES correlated as strongly as YFAS with all other measures of eating pathology, addictive personality and psychological wellbeing. Conclusions: Based on the remarkably similar overlap between the YFAS and BES with other eating, wellbeing or addiction-related behaviours, these results suggest that any unique behaviours supposedly identified by the YFAS do not appear to be distinct from binge eating. A clear definition of FA as a distinct condition is needed before there can any scientific basis for its validation.