The relationship between food addiction with psychiatric symptoms and personality traits in university students

Abstract

Objective: Food addiction is a behavioral addiction that presents with addictive behavioral changes toward high sugar, high fat, and highly palatable foods. This study aims to determine the relationship between food addiction with personality traits, personal habits, and psychiatric symptomatology. Method: In a cross-sectional design study, the participation of 1500 students studying in Konya Selçuk University Central Campus was planned. A sociodemographic data form, Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90), and Eysenck’s Personality Inventory (EPI) were used for assessment. Results: A total of 1418 forms were included in the statistical analysis. Food addiction prevalence was 11.4% in the study group. The mean YFAS score for total sample was 3.2, whereas it was 3.0 for non-food addicts, and 4.7 for food addicts. According to the logistic regression analysis, there were positive correlations between food addiction and body mass index, social media consumption over 5 hours, psychoticism subscale of EPI, interpersonal relations subscale of SCL-90. Also, there was a positive correlation with irregular eating, skipping meals, the number of snacks, eating time (<10 min and >30 min) and eating alone. All sub-scores for SCL-90 strongly differed between food addicts and non-addicts. Psychoticism and neuroticism scores were positively correlated with food addiction. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that food addiction is associated with some personality traits, personal habits, and psychiatric symptoms in a large university sample.