Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26)

Disordered eating rarely starts with anything dramatic. It looks like counting every bite, skipping meals after a big dinner or letting food decide your mood. This eating attitudes test gives those habits a clear shape. It shows how strong your fear of weight gain is, how often eating slips out of control and how tightly you hold back at the table.

What the test measures

The questionnaire was developed by David Garner and Paul Garfinkel in 1979, and the short EAT-26 version followed in 1982. It is still one of the most widely used measures of attitudes towards food. Its statements fall into three subscales. Dieting covers fear of gaining weight, counting calories, avoiding sugar and carbohydrates, and guilt after meals. Bulimia and food preoccupation covers thoughts about food that crowd out everything else, binges that are hard to stop and the urge to vomit afterwards. Oral control covers holding back when hungry, cutting food into tiny pieces and pressure from people who think you should eat more. Together they cover the main ways a relationship with food goes wrong, from strict restriction to the binge and purge cycle. Each subscale gets its own score, so you see which side lifts your total.

How it works and what you get

There are 26 short statements, and most people finish in about five minutes. For each one you choose how often it is true for you, from Always to Never. Following the original key, only the three most frequent answers earn points, and one statement about enjoying rich food counts the other way. Unlike a quick eating disorder test with a few yes or no questions, this one keeps the published scoring and its cutoff. Your result includes:

• your total score from 0 to 78 and where it sits against the cutoff of 20;
• scores for dieting, bulimia and food preoccupation, and oral control;
• the habits that add the most points to your total;
• a comparison with other people who took the test.

A score of 20 or more is the line the authors use to flag attitudes typical of eating problems. A lower score with one high subscale is just as telling, because it shows where a habit is starting to grow.