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Current Addiction Reports
Published in: Current Addiction Reports 3/2014

01-09-2014 | Addictive Disorders in DSM-5 (JE Grant, Section Editor)

Five years of the Yale Food Addiction Scale: Taking stock and moving forward

Authors: Adrian Meule, Ashley N. Gearhardt

Published in: Current Addiction Reports | Issue 3/2014

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Abstract

Some forms of overeating show both behavioral and neurobiological similarities to substance use disorders. Accordingly, a possible addiction to food has been discussed for decades, and the debate has received increased scientific and public attention since the beginning of the twenty-first century. In 2009, the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) was developed in an attempt to provide a standardized self-report instrument for the assessment of food addiction based on the diagnostic criteria for substance dependence. Since then, the YFAS has been used in numerous studies and celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. This article presents an overview of the YFAS and its adaptations, which includes a detailed description of scoring instructions and a supplementary SPSS syntax. Furthermore, psychometric properties and correlates of the YFAS, as well as prevalence rates of food addiction diagnoses and symptoms in different populations, are reviewed. Finally, shortcomings of the scale and future directions for food addiction research and revisions of the YFAS are discussed.
Appendix
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Footnotes
1
In one study [31], the most often selected foods were chocolate (selected by 54 % of participants), candy (46 %), cookies (25 %), chips (25 %), pastries (21 %), cake (21 %), pasta (18 %), pizza (18 %), ice cream (16 %), and French fries (14 %). These foods correspond to the most often craved foods identified in previous studies on food craving [61].
 
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Metadata
Title
Five years of the Yale Food Addiction Scale: Taking stock and moving forward
Authors
Adrian Meule
Ashley N. Gearhardt
Publication date
01-09-2014
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Published in
Current Addiction Reports / Issue 3/2014
Electronic ISSN: 2196-2952
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-014-0021-z

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