Is food addiction a predictor of treatment outcome among patients with eating disorder?

Abstract

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 study. FA was assessed by means of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Results: The results confirmed a high prevalence of FA in patients with binge disorders (around 87%) and also its association with a greater severity of the disorder (i.e., related to an increased eating psychopathology and greater frequency of binge eating episodes). Although FA did not appear as a predictor of treatment outcome in general terms, when the diagnostic subtypes were considered separately, FA was associated with poor prognosis in the BED group. In this vein, FA appeared as a mediator in the relationship between ED severity and treatment outcome. Discussions: Our findings suggest that FA may act as an indicator of ED severity, and it would be a predictor of treatment outcome in BED but not in BN.