Food addiction and impulsivity in adolescents: A cross-sectional survey of 360 cases

INTRODUCTION: Impulsive personality Traits have been highly associated with both alcohol abuse and drug addiction, but have been accorded little attention in the context of food addiction. OBJECTIVES: To study the relationship between impulsivity and food addiction in school-aged adolescents. METHODS: It is a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical survey, conducted in a sample of secondary school students, randomly collected in 6 schools in the region of Sfax during February 2022. A pre established form of 33 questions, including socio- demographic and family information was used. Impulsivity was evaluated by the Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS-11; Patton et al., 1995). The BIS is a 30-item questionnaire that measures impulsivity along the following dimensions: cognitive, motor, and non-planning. The validated arabic version was used. * The 25-item Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), validated in Arabic, was used to assess food addiction in adolescents. RESULTS: Our sample consisted of 360 adolescents, with an average age of 16.62 years, being male in 52.2% and with a low to medium socio-economic level in 72.7% of them. A total of 20% of the adolescents showed a tendency to impulsivity, 23.6% had impulse control disorder. The food addiction score of our sample ranged from 0 to 56 with an average of 16.37 ± 12.380. The average food addiction score for adolescents with impulse control disorder was 20.21 ±14.819 while the average food addiction score for adolescents without impulse control disorder was 15.18 ± 11.291. Food addiction was strongly associated with impulsivity (p < 0.001).In particularly, Non-planning impulsivity was most strongly correlated with food addiction (p < 0.001, r ꞊ 0.252) CONCLUSIONS: Impulsivity, commonly related to addictive substance use behaviors, may be a significant risk factor for food addiction. Early monitoring of impulse control disorder may help to reduce addictive food consumption. DISCLOSURE OF INTEREST: None Declared