Food Addiction Test: See How Much Control, Craving, and Consequence Shape Your Eating

How the food addiction score works

You rate 20 statements about your eating over the past 12 months, each from 0 (never) to 4 (nearly always), for a total from 0 to 80. Seven statements describe loss of control, seven describe craving and preoccupation, and six describe consequences, and the three are reported as separate bars under your total. The statements are original, written in plain language to cover the substance-use-style criteria that food addiction research adapts from the DSM-5: using more than intended, unsuccessful attempts to cut down, time spent, craving, continued use despite problems, giving up activities, tolerance, withdrawal, and interference with roles. The grouping into three areas is our own, for reading the pattern; it is not a validated subscale structure.

The four result bands split the 0 to 80 range into quarters and are educational, not clinical cutoffs. The research instrument in this area, the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (Gearhardt, Corbin, and Brownell, 2016), scores differently: it counts how many of eleven criteria are met and requires clinically significant impairment or distress before any 'food addiction' label is applied. This page does not reproduce the YFAS and does not apply its thresholds. A high score here means addiction-style features are prominent in your eating, which is worth understanding; it is not a diagnosis of anything, and nothing on this page should be read as a comment on your body or your worth.

The three bars are worth reading separately. Loss of control on its own, with low craving and few consequences, often describes someone caught in a restrict-and-rebound cycle: the eating feels out of control mainly because the rules around it are too tight. Craving and preoccupation on its own describes someone for whom food has become a way of managing feelings or filling time, and the useful question is what the food is standing in for. Consequences are what turn a pattern into a problem in every addiction framework, and a rising consequences bar is the clearest signal that it is time to talk to someone. If all three are high, the pattern has probably been running for a while, and that is exactly the picture that eating-disorder clinicians see every week and know how to treat.

The food addiction debate, in plain words

Researchers agree on the phenomenon and disagree on the name. Many people describe eating that feels compulsive: strong cravings for specific foods, eating far past what they intended, repeated failed attempts to stop, and shame afterwards. Studies using the YFAS find this pattern in roughly one in five people in the samples studied, with higher rates in clinical and higher-weight groups. The question is whether to call it addiction. Those in favor, including the scale's developers, point to the overlap with substance-use criteria and to brain imaging and animal work suggesting that highly processed foods act on reward systems in ways that whole foods do not. Those against, including Hebebrand and colleagues in an influential 2014 paper, argue that there is no identified addictive substance in food the way there is in tobacco or alcohol, that the pattern is better described as an eating addiction, a behavior, and that the label can add shame and encourage restrictive dieting that makes things worse.

Food addiction is not in the DSM-5 and no professional body recognizes it as a diagnosis. That does not make the experience less real; it means the science is unsettled and the honest position is to hold the idea lightly. We use the term because it is what people search for and what the research literature uses, with this caveat throughout: the useful question is not whether you are addicted but whether your relationship with food is costing you, and if it is, what would help.

Highly processed foods, reward, and why this is not about willpower

Most of the research on addiction-style eating points at a specific group of foods: those engineered to combine refined carbohydrates, added fats, salt, and flavor in doses and textures that do not occur in nature. These foods are rapidly absorbed, deliver a fast reward signal, and are designed to be eaten in large amounts; the same companies that make them have long known this. People rarely report compulsive eating of lentils or apples. Whatever the right word for the pattern turns out to be, the environment matters enormously, and a person who struggles with these foods is responding to something built to produce exactly that response.

This is why willpower is the wrong frame. Restriction tends to intensify craving, dieting rebound is one of the best-documented findings in eating research, and the cycle of restrict, crave, overeat, and restrict again can look like addiction from the inside while being driven mostly by the restriction. If your pattern includes strict rules about food followed by losing control, the loss of control may be the predictable consequence of the rules, not evidence of a disorder. That possibility is one of the first things a clinician who specializes in eating will explore with you, and it is the reason this page offers no diet advice at all.

The physiology of restriction is worth knowing, because it removes a lot of blame. When intake drops below what the body expects, hunger hormones rise, fullness signals weaken, attention narrows onto food, and the reward value of energy-dense foods climbs. These are not character flaws; they are the body doing its job, and the classic starvation studies of the 1940s documented the same preoccupation, secrecy, and loss of control in healthy volunteers who had simply been underfed. Add a world in which highly processed foods are everywhere, cheap, and designed to be hard to stop eating, and the pattern this test measures becomes close to predictable. That is why the clinicians who treat it start by restoring regular eating, not by taking more away.

Food addiction, binge eating, and what to do next

Addiction-style eating overlaps heavily with binge eating disorder, the DSM-5 diagnosis defined by recurrent episodes of eating an unusually large amount of food in a short time with a sense of loss of control, followed by distress, without purging. Studies find that most people who meet YFAS criteria for food addiction also meet criteria for binge eating disorder or another eating disorder, though not all, and the reverse is also true. If your result lands in the high or very high range, Binge Eating Disorder (BED) Test is the next test to take, because binge eating disorder has well-established treatments, including cognitive behavioral therapy and guided self-help, and those treatments are the same ones most likely to help with addiction-style eating. Eating Disorder Test screens more broadly if restriction or purging is also present.

Whatever your score, the compassionate next steps are the same. Stop any strict rules about food for now; they fuel the cycle. Eat regularly through the day so that you are not arriving at the evening starving. Notice what you were feeling right before the eating you regret; for many people it is loneliness, anxiety, or exhaustion rather than hunger, and Emotional Dysregulation Test and Self-Compassion Test look at that side. And talk to someone who treats eating difficulties, a therapist or a dietitian with eating-disorder training, rather than a diet program. The find-a-therapist link below searches for exactly that. If you suspect your difficulty with food is more about textures, smells, and a narrow range of accepted foods than about control or craving, Picky Eater Test covers a different pattern entirely.

Two more notes. If your eating is affecting your physical health, through blood sugar, digestion, sleep, or anything else, a doctor should be part of the picture alongside any mental-health support, and a doctor can also check whether a medication or a medical condition is driving appetite. And this page is written for adults reflecting on their own eating. If you are worried about a child's or teenager's relationship with food, a pediatrician or a family doctor is the right first step, since eating difficulties in young people need a different kind of assessment, and self-tests built for adults can mislead.

Methodology & sources

This test is informed by the criteria model used in food addiction research, most prominently the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 developed by Gearhardt, Corbin, and Brownell (2016), which adapts the eleven DSM-5 substance-use disorder criteria to eating: consuming more than intended, persistent desire or unsuccessful attempts to cut down, time spent, craving, failure to fulfill role obligations, continued use despite social problems, giving up activities, use in physically hazardous situations, continued use despite physical or psychological problems, tolerance, and withdrawal. The YFAS 2.0 is a research instrument distributed by its authors' laboratory at the University of Michigan for research use; this page names it and does not reproduce any of its items: we wrote 20 original statements in plain language, each describing one behavior or feeling about eating over the past 12 months, and then checked every one against all 35 published YFAS 2.0 items so that none of them repeats or paraphrases a published item.

Each statement is rated from 0 (never) to 4 (nearly always), giving a total of 0 to 80. The grouping into loss of control (7 items), craving and preoccupation (7 items), and consequences (6 items) is our own, for reading the pattern, not a validated subscale structure, and the four result bands divide the range into equal quarters as educational ranges, not clinical cutoffs. The YFAS 2.0 scores by counting criteria met and requires clinically significant impairment or distress; those thresholds do not apply here.

Food addiction is not a recognized diagnosis in the DSM-5 or ICD-11, and its validity as a construct is debated in the research literature. This test is for education and self-reflection only. It is not a diagnosis of food addiction, binge eating disorder, or any other condition, it does not assess weight or dietary quality, and it offers no diet advice. Only a licensed clinician can assess an eating disorder.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Reviewed the mapping of the original items to the substance-use-style criteria, the plain account of the food addiction debate and its overlap with binge eating disorder, and the no-diet, no-shame framing of each result. Last reviewed October 5, 2026.

References

1. Gearhardt AN, Corbin WR, Brownell KD. Development of the Yale Food Addiction Scale Version 2.0. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. 2016;30(1):113-121. doi.org/10.1037/adb0000136.
2. Pursey KM, Stanwell P, Gearhardt AN, Collins CE, Burrows TL. The prevalence of food addiction as assessed by the Yale Food Addiction Scale: a systematic review. Nutrients. 2014;6(10):4552-4590. doi.org/10.3390/nu6104552.
3. Hebebrand J, Albayrak O, Adan R, et al. 'Eating addiction', rather than 'food addiction', better captures addictive-like eating behavior. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 2014;47:295-306. doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.08.016.
4. Gearhardt AN, Schulte EM. Is food addictive? A review of the science. Annual Review of Nutrition. 2021;41:387-410. doi.org/10.1146/annurev-nutr-110420-111710.
5. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed., Text Revision (DSM-5-TR). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Publishing; 2022.

Food Addiction Test FAQ