Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Never
- Less than once a month
- Once a month
- 2–3 times per month
- Once a week
- 2–3 times per week
- 4–6 times per week
- Every day
- Never
- Less than once a month
- Once a month
- 2–3 times a month
- Once a week
- 2–3 times a week
- 4–6 times a week
- Every day
- Never
- Less than once a month
- Once a month
- 2–3 times a month
- Once a week
- 2–3 times a week
- 4–6 times a week
- Every day
Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) Test - Description and methodology of the test
People seeking a structured symptom assessment may use the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) Test to examine how eating-related experiences fit together and how strongly they affect daily functioning. As a food addiction questionnaire, this test organizes responses into a clearer pattern, giving the reader a symptom-focused result for self-reflection rather than an isolated impression.
What This Assessment Explores
The questionnaire provides a food addiction assessment of features around particular foods, rather than judging food quality. Items cover eating beyond fullness, recurring cravings, failed efforts to cut down, changes in desired effects, discomfort after stopping, and continued eating despite harm.
The questions group into four practical themes:
- Loss of control captures eating more or longer than intended.
- Craving and urgency show how strongly food thoughts or impulses direct behavior.
- Tolerance and withdrawal-like experiences describe needing more or feeling discomfort after stopping.
- Consequences and impairment indicate effects on health, duties, relationships, or social life.
The result is a Symptom Count of 0–11. Low 0–2 indicates fewer endorsed symptoms, Moderate 3–5 an intermediate number, and High 6–11 more endorsed features. The catalogue defines it as the number of food addiction symptoms endorsed; higher scores mean more endorsed addiction-related features, while diagnostic-level meaning also requires significant impairment or distress.
Methodology and Evidence Base
Each question uses frequency options from Never to Every day, with monthly and weekly steps between. This anchors frequency while covering behavior and consequences; respondents report how often an experience occurs, not merely whether it happened.
Its conceptual reference point is the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (Gearhardt et al., 2016). Earlier validation work by Gearhardt, Corbin, and Brownell and a later review by Meule and Gearhardt provide context for loss of control, craving, tolerance, withdrawal, continued eating despite harm, and impairment. As a food addiction test, it is conceptually consistent with that instrument; its online presentation should be interpreted separately from the published instrument.
The result is an endorsed-symptom total, and the displayed levels function as descriptive bands for this questionnaire. They summarize endorsed features; the published YFAS diagnostic procedure considers clinically significant impairment or distress. Stress, context, memory, and self-awareness may influence responses.
Interpret the outcome as a structured self-report indicator for further reflection. It cannot determine formal diagnostic status by itself; meaningful conclusions require attention to impairment or distress and, when appropriate, broader assessment.
- Gearhardt, A. N., Corbin, W. R., & Brownell, K. D. (2016). Development of the Yale Food Addiction Scale Version 2.0. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 30(1), 113–121. 10.1037/adb0000136
- Gearhardt, A. N., Corbin, W. R., & Brownell, K. D. (2009). Preliminary validation of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Appetite, 52(2), 430–436. 10.1016/j.appet.2008.12.003
- Meule, A., & Gearhardt, A. N. (2019). Ten Years of the Yale Food Addiction Scale: A Review of Version 2.0. Current Addiction Reports, 6(3), 218–228. 10.1007/s40429-019-00261-3
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