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Risk patterns in food addiction: a Mexican population approach

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Abstract

Background

Food addiction (FA) is a construct that has gained interest in recent years but its relevance in Mexican population is still unexplored.

Aims

The 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 have been described such as impulsivity, emotional regulation and eating styles. Furthermore, to identify a predictive model of FA severity.

Methods

The sample consisted of 160 female and male university students of Pachuca city in México, who volunteered to participate in the study. Assessment included multidimensional measures for FA, eating disorder severity, eating disorder styles, emotional regulation and impulsivity.

Results

A screening of FA-probable was registered for 13.8% of the sample, while 8.1% met criteria for FA-present. The FA-present group differed from FA-absent in the impulsivity levels and in emotional eating style. Patients with FA-present differed from FA-probable in the impulsivity levels. Differences between FA-probable versus FA-absent were found in the restrained eating style. Path analysis evidenced that FA severity was directly associated with older age, worse eating style profile and higher impulsivity levels, and indirectly related with the ED symptom levels.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that it is possible to establish a specific predictive model of the development of FA and its severity in Mexican population to implement adequate prevention and treatment strategies.

Evidence level

Level III: evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case–control analytic studies

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to ethical restrictions to protect the confidentiality of the participants, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

We thank CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya for institutional support; to the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) (FIS PI17/01167); to PERIS (SLT006/17/00077); to the co-founded of FEDER funds/European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), a way to build Europe. CIBERObn is an initiative of ISCIII. LM is supported by a postdoctoral Grant of the Mexican Institution Consejo Naional de Ciencia y Tecnología-CONACYT (Science and Technology National Counsel). AG is supported by a pre-doctoral Grant of Fundación Carolina and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (Foreign relations secretary of the United States of Mexico).

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Conceptualization: LM, SJ-M, FF-A; methodology: RG; formal analysis: RG; data collection and investigation: LM, EV-M, AGP, GF, LG; writing—original draft preparation: LM, SJ-M, EV-M; RG, FF-A; writing—review and editing: LM, SJ-M, EV-M; RG, ANG, FF-A; funding acquisition: LM, SJ-M, FF-A; resources: LM, SJ-M, FF-A; supervision: LM, SJ-M, RMEG-S, MS, ANG, FF-A.

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Correspondence to Lucero Munguía or Fernando Fernández-Aranda.

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In accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, the present study was approved by the proper local Ethics Committee, and signed informed consent was asked to the participants.

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Munguía, L., Jiménez-Murcia, S., Valenciano-Mendoza, E. et al. Risk patterns in food addiction: a Mexican population approach. Eat Weight Disord 27, 1077–1087 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-021-01240-2

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