Ashley N Gearhardt

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Psychology

Background The Modified Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (mYFAS 2.0) was developed with the primary objective of evaluating food addiction (FA). The present study aimed to undertake the translation, pilot testing, and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the mYFAS 2.0 within the Persian-speaking population. Methods The transcultural adaptatio...

Purpose To assess associations between persistent and changing food insecurity and behavioral and mental health outcomes in college students. Design Online surveys conducted November 2018 and March 2019 (freshman year), and March 2020 (sophomore year) were used to assess food insecurity, which was then used to create 4 food security transitions: p...

Background Growing research has highlighted associations between food insecurity and eating-related problems. Food addiction is one important, clinically significant pattern of problematic eating, which is related to, but distinct from, eating disorders. To date, there is only one study examining the association between food insecurity and food add...

Background Data implicate overlaps in neurobiological pathways involved in appetite regulation and addictive disorders. Despite different neuroendocrine measures having been associated with both gambling disorder (GD) and food addiction (FA), how appetite-regulating hormones may relate to the co-occurrence of both entities remain incompletely under...

Conceptualising ultra-processed foods high in carbohydrates and fats as addictive substances can contribute to efforts to improve health, argue Ashley Gearhardt and colleagues

Examining typical developmental trajectories of infant eating behaviors, correlates of those trajectories, and cross-lagged associations between eating behaviors and anthropometry, is important to understand the etiology of these behaviors and their relevance to growth early in the lifespan. Mothers (N = 276) completed the Baby Eating Behavior Ques...

The relationship between food addiction, an important emerging construct of excessive eating pathology, and dietary restraint has yet to be fully understood. Eating disorder models commonly posit that dietary restraint exacerbates loss of control eating (e.g., binge episodes) and may also play a causal role in the development of food addiction. How...

Food addiction (FA) and substance use (SU) in eating disorders (ED) have been associated with a more dysfunctional clinical and psychopathological profile. However, their impact on treatment outcomes has been poorly explored. Therefore, this transdiagnostic study is aimed at examining whether the presence of FA and/or SU is associated with treatmen...

The early postpartum period is a sensitive time for understanding women's high-risk eating (i.e., eating behavior associated with negative health outcomes) given potential long-term eating behavior implications for infants. Food addiction and dietary restraint are two high-risk eating phenotypes associated with long-term negative health outcomes th...

Objective: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly co-occurs with substance use disorders (SUDs). Past studies suggest PTSD is also associated with food addiction (compulsive intake of highly processed foods containing refined carbohydrates and/or added fat). However, research investigating gender differences has been limited (e.g., restric...

Importance: The capacity for regulation of energy intake (REI) to match energy needs is thought to contribute to differences in weight gain, and preventing excess infant weight gain is a priority. Objective: To determine capacity for REI across infancy. Design, setting, and participants: For this cohort study, a convenience sample of mother-in...

Food-related emotional expectancies influence food intake, yet little is known about their determinants. The present study objectives were to experimentally test how food advertisements affect food-related emotional expectancies in adults and whether effects differed by individual levels of "food addiction" symptoms. Participants (n = 718; Mage = 3...

Background Food addiction (FA) is characterised by symptoms such as loss of control over food consumption, inability to reduce consumption despite the desire to do so, and continued consumption despite negative consequences. The modified Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (mYFAS 2.0) is a widely used instrument to assess FA. Objectives To validate the...

Externalizing behaviors in childhood often predict impulse control disorders in adulthood; however, the underlying bio-behavioral risk factors are incompletely understood. In animals, the propensity to sign-track, or the degree to which incentive motivational value is attributed to reward cues, is associated with externalizing-type behaviors and de...

This study aimed to validate and investigate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Measure of Eating Compulsivity-10 (MEC10-IT) in a sample of inpatients with severe obesity (Study 1), and to test the measurement invariance of the measure across non-clinical and clinical samples (Study 2). In the first study, a confirmatory fact...

Maternal food addiction, dietary restraint, and pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) are associated with high-risk eating behaviors and weight characteristics in children and adolescents. However, little is known about how these maternal factors are associated with individual differences in eating behaviors and risk for overweight in infancy. In a s...

This study sought to identify sucking profiles among healthy, full-term infants and assess their predictive value for future weight gain and eating behaviors. Pressure waves of infant sucking were captured during a typical feeding at age 4 months and quantified via 14 metrics. Anthropometry was measured at 4 and 12 months, and eating behaviors were...

Importance There is increasing interest in strategies to encourage more environmentally sustainable food choices in US restaurants through the use of menu labels that indicate an item’s potential impact on the world’s climate. Data are lacking on the ideal design of such labels to effectively encourage sustainable choices. Objective To test the ef...

Individual differences exist in perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD). PVD is associated with negative responses (e.g., disgust) towards individuals with obesity and heightened sensitivity regarding personal appearance. Through increasing fear of fat (FOF), PVD may be associated with cognitive restraint and compensatory behaviors. We utilized an...

Background: There is growing evidence that an addictive-eating phenotype may exist. There is significant debate regarding whether highly processed foods (HPFs; foods with refined carbohydrates and/or added fats) are addictive. The lack of scientifically grounded criteria to evaluate the addictive nature of HPFs has hindered the resolution of this...

The Yale Food Addiction Scale version 2.0 (YFAS 2.0) is used for the assessment of food addiction (FA). This research intended to evaluate the validity of the Persian translation of the questionnaire and to investigate the psychological properties and the association between FA and anthropometric indices. In a sample of 473 nonclinical participant...

Candidates for metabolic/bariatric surgery show a high prevalence of food addiction (FA). However, few studies have investigated FA prevalence after bariatric surgery, especially using longitudinal studies. This systematic review with a meta‐analysis aimed to determine pre‐ and postoperative prevalence of FA among patients undergoing metabolic/bari...

Introduction Food Addiction (FA) has been related with eating disorders (ED), especially Bulimia Nervosa (BN). BN + FA may have different physical characteristics than patients with BN without the comorbidity, such as body mass index (BMI) or body composition, and psychological as emotion regulation. However, the relationship between psychological...

The article in this issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Kong and colleagues (1) highlights the important role of reinforcement (i.e. the ability of a behavior/substance to be sufficiently rewarding to maintain self-administration) in shaping food preferences in infancy. Refined carbohydrates (like sugar) and fat are capable of tr...

Researchers are currently debating whether theories of addiction explain compulsive overeating of highly processed (HP) foods (i.e., industrially created foods high in refined carbohydrates and/or fat), which contributes to obesity and diet‐related disease. A subset of individuals consumes HP foods with behavioral phenotypes that mirror substance u...

Although food addiction (FA) is a debated condition and it is not currently recognized as a formal diagnosis, it shares features with other addictions, such as gambling disorder (GD). However, the prevalence of FA in GD and the clinical correlates are incompletely understood, especially within women versus men. To investigate FA in patients present...

Background Red meat production is a leading contributor to food-related greenhouse gas emissions. Decreasing red meat intake can mitigate climate change and lower risk of diet-related diseases. Objective The goal of this study is to evaluate university students’ perceptions of climate-friendly behaviors, and to assess how these perceptions are ass...

Download PDF Download PDF Original Article Published: 08 January 2022 Prevalence of food addiction and its association with anxiety, depression, and adherence to social distancing measures in Brazilian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic: a nationwide study André Eduardo da Silva Júnior, Mateus de Lima Macena, …Nassib Bezerra Bueno Sho...

Background: The Yale Food Addiction Scale version 2.0 (YFAS 2.0) is used for the assessment of food addiction (FA). This research intended to evaluate the validity of the Persian translation of the questionnaire and to investigate the psychological properties and the association between FA and anthropometric indices. Methods: In a sample of 473...

Longitudinal data are needed to examine effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on disordered eating. We capitalized on an ongoing, longitudinal study collecting daily data to examine changes in disordered eating symptoms in women across 49 days that spanned the time before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Women from the Michigan Sta...

Objective: The present study investigates the rates of co-occurrence among food addiction (FA), problematic substance use (alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes, nicotine vaping), parental history of problematic alcohol use, and obesity as an important step to understanding whether an addictive-like eating phenotype exists. Method: A community sample of 35...

Purpose of Review Food addiction posits that the nature of ultra-processed food (UPF) contributes to addiction. Tolerance and withdrawal are core addiction symptoms that have received little attention in the food addiction literature. This review aimed to summarize evidence for tolerance and withdrawal in the UPF context. Recent Findings Following...

Importance: Manipulative design features (known as dark patterns) are common in video games and adult-directed technologies, but their prevalence in children's interactive media has not been described. Objectives: To develop a reliable coding scheme for gathering data on manipulative digital designs, describe their prevalence within apps used by...

Objective Childhood trauma has been associated with substance use disorders (SUDs), but less research has investigated its association with food addiction (i.e., compulsive intake of highly processed foods containing refined carbohydrates and/or added fat). Existing research on childhood trauma and food addiction has focused primarily on women from...

Background The Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (YFAS 2.0) operationalizes food addiction (FA) by applying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition (DSM 5) criteria for substance use disorder (SUD) to the overconsumption of highly processed foods. The YFAS 2.0 has been quantitatively validated across numerous populations...

Background Household food insecurity persists in the United States and has important implications for health and well-being. Food insecurity in female-identified caregivers is particularly concerning given its association with their mental health and adverse health outcomes for their children. Food insecurity is associated with disordered eating, b...

Purpose Adolescence is a high-risk period for development of addictive behavior. This may also apply to addiction-like eating of highly processed foods—commonly referred to as “food addiction”. Adolescents with mental disorder may be at particularly elevated risk of developing food addiction as addiction often accompanies mental disorder. However,...

Background Food addiction (FA) is a construct that has gained interest in recent years but its relevance in Mexican population is still unexplored.AimsThe present study has the aims of explore FA in a community of Mexican population, as well as identifying the risk patterns associated with it, in relation to the different etiological factors that h...

Objective Eating behavior regulation emerges during early development and involves general self-regulation (emotional, behavioral), appetite regulation (homeostatic metabolic need) and appetite self-regulation (including both Bottom-Up Food Approach and Bottom-Up Food Avoidance and top-down purposeful self-control of eating). Limited research has i...

Despite public health efforts to reduce sugary drink consumption, children's intake continues to exceed recommendations. While numerous barriers to lowering sugary drink consumption have been identified, aversive feelings during sugary drink cessation may further challenge sustained reduction in children's sugary drink consumption. Herein, we descr...

Background: A first approach of a phenotypic characterization of food addiction (FA) found three clusters (dysfunctional, moderate and functional). Based on this previous classification, the aim of the present study is to explore treatment responses in the sample diagnosed with Eating Disorder(ED) of different FA profiles. Methods: The sample wa...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread non-essential business closures in the U.S., which may have disproportionately impacted food consumption in lower-income communities, in part due to reduced access to healthy and affordable foods, as well as occupations that may have required working outside the home. The aims of this study were to examine re...

Background Ultra-processed foods contribute to risks of obesity and cardiometabolic disease, and higher intakes have been observed in low-income populations in the US. Consumption of ultra-processed foods may be particularly higher among individuals experiencing food insecurity and participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNA...

Adolescence is a period of increased risk-taking behavior, thought to be driven, in part, by heightened reward sensitivity. One challenge of studying reward processing in the field of developmental neuroscience is finding a task that activates reward circuitry, and is short, not too complex, and engaging for youth of a wide variety of ages and soci...

Externalizing behaviours in childhood often predict impulse control disorders in adulthood; however, the underlying biobehavioural risk factors are incompletely understood. In animals, the propensity to sign-track, or the degree to which incentive motivational value is attributed to reward cues, is associated with externalizing-type behaviours and...

Background and aims: Food addiction (FA) and substance use (SU) have frequently been reported in patients with eating disorders (EDs). Our study aimed to assess the prevalence rates of FA and/or lifetime problematic alcohol and illicit drug use among patients with specific ED, such as: bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder (BED), and other s...

Objective To determine, through a systematic review with meta-analysis, the prevalence of food addiction (FA) using the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) and its derivatives exploring possible factors associated with the prevalence of FA in several contexts. Methods The following databases were searched: MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, LILACS, PsycArticles...

Purpose Obesity among adolescents is becoming increasingly prevalent and “food addiction” (addiction-like attraction to foods with high content of fat and refined carbohydrates) may be a potential contributor to this development. This study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the dimensional Yale Food Addiction Scale for Children ve...

Increased consumption of highly processed foods may result in lower diet quality, and low diet quality is associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. One mechanism driving highly processed food intake is the expectation that eating these foods will improve emotional experiences, particularly among individua...

Objective: Food-related attentional bias has been defined as the tendency to give preferential attention to food-related stimuli. Attentional bias is of interest as studies have found that increased attentional bias is associated with obesity; others, however, have not. A possible reason for mixed results may be that there is no agreed upon measure...

Objective To experimentally test weight stigma and weight stigma by association in a parent-child relationship using a large, community-based sample. Methods We conducted a randomized experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk using an online survey. Participants were randomly assigned to view a picture of a parent-child dyad, for which the parent and c...

As ultraprocessed foods (i.e., foods composed of mostly cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives) have become more abundant in our food supply, rates of obesity and diet-related disease have increased simultaneously. Food addiction has emerged as a phenotype of significant empirical interest within the past decade, co...

Objective Growing evidence suggests highly processed foods may trigger an addictive-like process, which is associated with obesity. Other research suggests an addictive-like process occurs in response to eating itself, rather than specific foods. Addiction-based obesity explanations raise concerns about double stigmatization of people with obesity...

Purpose Previous studies have demonstrated overlapping behavioral features between substance-use disorders and food addiction, the latter of which is particularly prevalent among individuals with overweight or obesity. However, the unique attributes of food addiction as a possible phenotype within overweight and obesity are not fully understood. M...

The potential negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health-compromising behaviors including overeating, processed food intake, and alcohol use have been well documented. However, it is possible the COVID-19 pandemic has had positive effects on some health-promoting behaviors like cooking and fruit and vegetable intake. The current study was...

Unhealthy diets are widespread and linked to a number of detrimental clinical outcomes. The current preregistered experiment extended expectancy theory into the study of food intake; specifically, we tested whether a fast-food restaurant affects food expectancies, or the emotions one expects to feel while eating highly processed foods (e.g., pizza)...

Self-regulation, known as the ability to harness cognitive, emotional, and motivational resources to achieve goals, is hypothesized to contribute to health behaviors across the lifespan. Enhancing self-regulation early in life may increase positive health outcomes. During pre-adolescence, children assume increased autonomy in health behaviors (e.g....

Background The Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) was developed in 2009 to assess food addiction (FA); a revised version was released in 2016 (YFAS 2.0). The objective of this study was to determine the statistical and clinical validity of the YFAS 2.0 in adults seeking bariatric surgery.Methods Patients who underwent a preoperative psychological eva...

Purpose To examine the structural validity, measurement invariance, reliability, and some other psychometrical properties of the Italian version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2 (I-YFAS 2.0) in patients with severe obesity and the general population. Methods 704 participants—400 inpatients with severe obesity and 304 participants enrolled from t...

Television (TV) viewing remain a popular forms of screen time for adolescents. Greater TV viewing is associated with a number of negative consequences for adolescent health. In a changing media landscape, it is important to understand adolescents’ overall and commercial TV exposure, and how TV viewing is linked to health risks (e.g., obesity, food...

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has created widespread stress. Since many people cope with stress by eating, the current study investigated whether eating behaviors shifted among U.S. adults after the emergence of the pandemic. Data from national, crowdsourced surveys conducted on March 31st, 2020 and February 13th, 2019 were compare...

We tested if we could replicate the main effect relations of elevated striatum and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) response to high-calorie food stimuli to weight gain reported in past papers in six prospective datasets that used similar fMRI paradigms. Participants in Study 1 (N = 37; M age = 15.5), Study 2 (N = 160; M age = 15.3), Study 3 (N =...

Binge eating is an extreme form of loss of control over the consumption of food. The foods consumed in a binge are typically highly processed (HP) foods with unnaturally high levels of refined carbohydrates and/or fat (e.g., chocolate, pizza, cookies). Animal models play a key role in identifying the underlying mechanisms implicated in binge eating...

During the last few years, food addiction (FA) increased its popularity both in clinical and research practice. To date, the gold standard for the assessment of FA is the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (YFAS2.0)-that conceptualizes FA as a substance-related and addictive disorder (SRAD), according to the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. Despite an intensi...

Food addiction (FA) is often associated with compulsive overeating and binge eating disorders (BED). However, few studies have investigated the process that could lead to binge eating behaviors starting from FA. Literature showed that FA may trigger emotional eating (EE)-an intensive need to eat to cope with negative emotive states. Moreover, EE of...

Evidence is growing that highly processed (HP) foods (i.e., foods high in refined carbohydrates and fat) are highly effective in activating reward systems and may even be capable of triggering addictive processes. Unlike traditional drugs of abuse, exposure to HP foods is common very early in development. HP food addiction has been associated with...

Objectives The modified Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (mYFAS 2.0) was designed to assess food addiction using a shorter version than the YFAS 2.0. We lack data about the psychometric properties of the mYFAS 2.0 in patients with obesity, as well as studies comparing the psychometric properties of the mYFAS 2.0 versus the full YFAS 2.0. This study ai...

Objective The current study examined whether adolescents with weight status ranging from lean to obesity showed weight‐related differences in the default mode network (DMN), the executive function network (EFN), and the salience network (SN). Methods One hundred sixty‐four adolescents participated in a resting‐state functional connectivity scan. A...

Sucking behavior has been described as an obesity risk marker. Sucking behavior in response to challenge has not been examined as a prospective predictor of infant weight gain. Healthy, full term infants had sucking behavior assessed at ages 2 weeks and/or 2 months via a sucking pressure measurement device in two feeding conditions: during a standa...

Behavioral responses to sucrose provide an index of positive hedonic response in newborns. In 118 infants, the current study used repeated assessments to explore behavioral responses to sucrose solutions (24%/50% sucrose) compared to water across the first six months of infancy. Lip smacking and bringing fingers to mouth are more likely to occur in...

Concerns have been raised about excessive or “addictive” phone use among adolescents, and the impact that addictive phone use (APU) can have on adolescent development and health. Most research on the physical health correlates of smartphone use has been limited to sleep health, whereas other outcomes, such as eating behaviors and obesity risk have...

Attempts to make healthier food choices often fail, particularly for people who are actively trying to diet. Distanced self-talk—using one’s name and non-first-person-singular pronouns (vs. first-person pronouns) to reflect on the self—provides a relatively effortless self-control tool that enhances goal pursuit. We investigated whether distanced (...

Background Given growing evidence of overlap in characteristics of addictive substances and highly processed foods (e.g., ice cream), transdiagnostic approaches may be appropriate. Prior work indicates youth with parents who use addictive substances are at risk for greater substance use. The current study tested hypotheses that parental substance u...

To cite this supplementary: Manzoni, G.M., Rossi, A., Pietrabissa, G. et al. Structural validity, measurement invariance, reliability and diagnostic accuracy of the Italian version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 in patients with severe obesity and the general population. Eat Weight Disord (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-020-00858-y

As evidenced through classic Pavlovian learning mechanisms, environmental cues can become incentivized and influence behavior. These stimulus-outcome associations are relevant in everyday life but may be particularly important for the development of impulse control disorders including addiction. Rodent studies have elucidated specific learning prof...

Background: Food advertising is a major contributor to obesity, and fast food (FF) restaurants are top advertisers. Research on the impact of food advertising in adolescents is lacking and no prior research has investigated neural predictors of food intake in adolescents. Neural systems implicated in reward could be key to understanding how food a...

Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood is associated with a myriad of negative adult outcomes. One mechanism through which disadvantage undermines positive outcomes may be by disrupting the development of self-control. The goal of the present study was to examine pathways from three key indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage - low family inc...

Expectancy theory has been widely applied in substance use research but has received less attention in eating behavior research. Measuring food expectancies, or the anticipated outcomes of eating specific foods, holds theoretical and practical promise for investigations into nonhomeostatic eating behavior. The current study developed and assessed t...

Food addiction (FA) has been associated with greater psychopathology in individuals with eating disorders (ED) and obesity (OBE). The current study aims to provide a better phenotypic characterization of the FA construct by conducting a clustering analysis of FA in both conditions (ED and OBE). The total sample was comprised of 234 participants tha...

Objectives: The study aimed to examine whether food addiction (FA) was associated with greater severity in both binge eating disorders (BED) and bulimia nervosa and, therefore, to determine if FA was predictive of treatment outcome. Method: Seventy-one adult patients with bulimia nervosa and BED (42 and 29, respectively) participated in the stud...

Intraoral sucrose has analgesic effects in the newborn period. The hedonic and analgesic effects of sucrose overlap and hedonic response to sweet food is associated with adiposity. The potential association between the analgesic effects of intraoral sucrose in the newborn period and subsequent weight gain has not been examined. Healthy, term newbor...

The scientific literature on links among alcohol use, total energy intake, cardiometabolic disease and obesity is conflicting. To clarify the link between alcohol use and cardiometabolic health, this systematic review (PROSPERO CRD42016039308A) uses PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses) guidelines to synthesize...

Family history of substance use is a well-established risk factor for greater substance use in adolescence and adulthood. The biological vulnerability hypothesis proposes that family history of substance use might also confer risk for obesogenic eating behavior because of similar rewarding characteristics between substances and certain foods (e.g.,...

Purpose of Review The Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) is a self-report questionnaire for the assessment of addiction-like consumption of high-calorie, processed foods. The original scale was developed in 2009 and—for its tenth anniversary—we now review studies using its revised version—the YFAS 2.0. Recent Findings The 11 symptoms of food addicti...

Background: While neuroimaging studies have revealed that reward dysfunction may similarly contribute to obesity and addiction, no prior studies have examined neural responses in individuals who meet the "clinical" food addiction phenotype. Methods: Women (n = 44) with overweight and obesity, nearly half of whom (n = 20) met criteria for moderat...

Background Meta‐analysis shows that parental cigarette smoking is associated with child obesity. Objectives This study tested for associations between severity of maternal nicotine dependence and longitudinal changes in child eating behavior in archival data analysis. Methods Maternal nicotine dependence was assessed with the Fagerstrom Test for...

Objective: The association between stress and eating remains unclear in children potentially due to factors that may moderate the association. We examined whether weight status or sex moderated associations between response to a stress induction and eating in the absence of hunger (EAH), among low-income children. Method: Children (n = 223; M ag...