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Examining the construct validity of food addiction severity specifiers
Ashley A Wiedemann1, Meagan M Carr2, Valentina Ivezaj2
1Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, 300 George Street, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA. Ashley.wiedemann@yale.edu.
Eating and Weight Disorders : EWD
|July 30, 2020
Summary
Food addiction severity specifiers based on symptom count have limited utility. Future research should explore alternative methods for differentiating food addiction levels.
Area of Science:
- Psychiatry
- Clinical Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Food addiction (FA) is associated with increased BMI, eating disorder pathology, food cravings, and psychosocial impairment.
- The utility of FA severity specifiers, using the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (YFAS 2.0) symptom count, is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the utility of FA severity specifiers based on the number of symptoms endorsed on the YFAS 2.0.
- To examine the relationship between FA severity levels and eating disorder psychopathology, food craving, and related concerns.
Main Methods:
- A cross-sectional descriptive study involving 1854 participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk.
- Participants completed online self-report measures for FA (YFAS 2.0), eating disorder psychopathology, and food craving.
- Participants were categorized into four groups: No FA, mild FA, moderate FA, and severe FA based on YFAS 2.0 specifiers.
Main Results:
- Significant differences in age, sex, BMI, and objective binge-eating episodes (OBEs) were observed across FA groups.
- The No FA group reported significantly lower levels of shape concern, weight concern, eating concern, and global eating disorder psychopathology compared to FA groups.
- The severe FA group reported higher food craving scores than the No FA group.
Conclusions:
- Findings suggest that FA severity specifiers, based solely on symptom count, have limited utility, similar to findings in eating and substance use disorder literature.
- Further research is recommended to identify alternative targets for effectively discriminating between different levels of FA.
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