Compulsive “grazing” and addictive tendencies towards food

Abstract

Evidence suggests that palatable foods can promote an addictive process akin to drugs of abuse. To date, research in the field of food addiction has focused largely on binge eating as a symptom of this condition. The present study investigated relationships between food addiction and other patterns of overeating, such as compulsive grazing—a behaviour with high relevance to bariatric surgery outcomes. Adults between the ages of 20 and 50 years (n = 232) were recruited for the study. Participants completed questionnaires to assess various eating behaviours and related personality measures. Regression analysis employed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) as the dependent variable. Results indicated that addictive personality traits, reward‐driven eating, and compulsive grazing each contributed unique variance to the YFAS symptom score. These findings provide novel insight into the association between a grazing pattern of overeating and food addiction, and emphasize that similar to traditional addiction disorders such as alcoholism, binge consumption is not the only pattern of compulsive intake.

Food addiction, eating addiction and eating disorders

“…Thus, BED has been proposed as a psycho-behavioural disorder and food addiction as a biological-based disorder (72) . Moreover, grazing patterns of overconsumption in individuals with food addiction has been reported (74) , which indicates that overeating does not only occur as a binge, such as those in the diagnostic criteria for both BN and BED. Furthermore, food addiction has been reported after bariatric surgery (74,75) when binges are not physiologically possible, but grazing is common.…”

The short inventory of grazing (SIG): development and validation of a new brief measure of a common eating behaviour with a compulsive dimension

“…A recent systematic review of grazing in obesity and ED [7] suggests that where LOC is present, associations exist with lower mental health-related quality of life (MHRQoL), higher psychological distress, more severe ED psychopathology (such as lower body image, more severe and frequent binge eating), and less successful weight reduction treatment outcomes. In adult non-clinical samples, grazing associated with a sense of LOC has been found to be positively correlated with BMI and psychological distress [10] and to have stronger associations with eating disorder psychopathology than non-compulsive grazing [11]; additionally, very recently a significant positive association has also been found between compulsive grazing and food addiction severity (based on the Yale Food Addiction Scale, which uses a substance dependence disorder symptom model modified for eating behaviours) [12]. Although this is changing, there is still a paucity of information on this pattern of eating in community-based samples, ED samples, as well as in persons with overweight/obesity not seeking weight loss treatment, or seeking non-surgical treatment.…”

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

“…However, FA is receiving an increased interest and a growing body of research in the last years (Fernández‐Aranda, 2018). The concept of FA posits that individuals experience addictive‐like symptoms related to the consumption of high‐calorie/palatable foods (Bonder, Davis, Kuk, & Loxton, ; Davis, ; Meule, von Rezori, & Blechert, ; such as preoccupation with obtaining a desired food, excessive consumption of unhealthy foods despite adverse health consequences, craving, impaired control, tolerance, withdrawal, and distress/dysfunction; Fletcher & Kenny, ; Gordon, Ariel‐Donges, Bauman, & Merlo, ), and with biological–hormonal maintaining factors (Novelle & Diéguez, ; Peters et al, 2018). It has been related to other addictive disorders due to the parallels in the neurochemistry (Gearhardt 2016; Jiménez‐Murcia et al, ; Tomasi et al, ), specifically in terms of participation of the dopaminergic reward system and the activation of positive reinforcement mechanisms (Carter & Davis, ; Racine, Hagan, & Schell, ; Volkow, Wang, Fowler, Tomasi, & Baler, ).…”