Prevalence of social, cognitive, and emotional impairment among individuals with food addiction
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BRIEF REPORT
Prevalence of social, cognitive, and emotional impairment among individuals with food addiction Emilie Lacroix1 · Kristin M. von Ranson1 Received: 8 May 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Purpose The clinical utility of the construct of food addiction has been heavily debated. Though food addiction has been associated with psychosocial impairment in clinical samples, it is critical to examine these associations in non-clinical samples, to obtain unbiased evidence regarding this phenomenon’s clinical significance. It is also unknown which types of impairment are most common in food addiction. This observational study explored the association of self-reported food addiction with impairment in the domains of social, cognitive, and emotional functioning. Methods Participants (356 university students and 544 adults recruited through Mechanical Turk) completed the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 and Clinical Impairment Assessment 3.0 questionnaire, as well as measures of emotional eating, rewarddriven eating, binge eating, and general disordered eating. Results Food addiction scores showed large correlations with emotional (r = 0.55, 0.57), social (r = 0.56, 0.59), and cognitive impairment (r = 0.58, 0.53) in the student and Mechanical Turk samples, respectively. The most common difficulties endorsed were emotional (e.g., feeling ashamed or critical of oneself, upset, or worried due to one’s eating habits), followed by social and cognitive. Conclusion Food addiction was strongly associated with psychosocial impairment in two non-clinical samples, suggesting this phenomenon merits further investigation. We found substantial associations of food addiction with emotional as well as social and cognitive impairment. Keywords Food addiction · Overeating · Emotional impairment · Cognitive impairment · Social impairment
Introduction and aims Debate has surrounded the concept of food addiction, the notion that individuals can become addicted to certain foods. Criticisms abound regarding the food addiction construct and limitations of the evidence in support of it, centering on two points: that the central features of substance use disorders do not translate to food and eating; and that there is This article is part of the Topical Collection on Food and Addiction. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-020-01014-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Kristin M. von Ranson [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
insufficient evidence regarding pharmacological effects of food on the brain [1]. Another key question is whether food addiction is associated with clinically significant psychosocial impairment, i.e., to a degree that would warrant its conceptualization as a form of psychopathology. To meet criteria for “food addiction” on the Yale Food Addiction Scale [YFAS; 2], in
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