# Socio-demographic, dietary, exercise, and mental health factors associated with food addiction symptoms in university students

## TL;DR

This study explores how factors like income, mental health, and diet influence food addiction symptoms in university students.

## Contribution

The study identifies multiple socio-demographic and lifestyle factors linked to food addiction symptoms in a student population.

## Key findings

- Female sex, low family income, and psychiatric disorders were associated with more food addiction symptoms.
- Physical activity and regular meal consumption were linked to fewer symptoms.
- Current dieting and tobacco use predicted higher food addiction symptoms.

## Abstract

Food addiction is characterized by repeated and uncontrolled consumption of food, usually ultra-processed foods.

To investigate the impact of sociodemographic, health, lifestyle, and dietary factors on food addiction symptoms.

A total of 512 university students (both sexes, aged between 18 and 35 years) provided information on completion that included the variables include family income, physical activity, psychiatric and physical disorders, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use. They also shared dietary information such as main meal types and whether they added salt to food. Food addiction symptoms were assessed using the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0. We used a multiple linear regression model was used to investigate predicted changes in the number of food addiction symptoms.

The model hadshowed an adjusted R2 adjusted of 0.167 (and p < 0.001). Female sex (B = 0.506; p = < 0.,0401), low family income (from low to moderate: B = -0.803, p = 0.,002; and from low to high: B = -0.732, p = 0.024), physical (p = 0,046) and psychiatric disorders (B = 1.062, p < = 0.001,08), practice of physical activity (B = -0.682, p = 0.009) and be in current dieting (B = 1.498, p < 0.001) predicted morea use of tobacco and derivatives (p = 0,020) food addiction symptoms. (p = 0,018) (p = 0,025) consumes less than five meals a day (p < 0,001).

Food addiction symptoms were found to be a multifactorial phenomenon, associated with sociodemographic and economic status, diet, exercise, and mental health. The limitations of this study of this study includewere its cross-sectional design, lack ofno dietary consumption data, sample convenience sampling-based, self-selection bias, and simplification ed collection of dietary concerns.