Feared food in dieting and non-dieting young women: a preliminary validation of the Food Phobia Survey

The Food Phobia Survey (FPS) is a recently developed clinical instrument designed to identify foods that are avoided out of fear or guilt by eating disordered individuals. The measure has potential utility in clinical settings for several purposes: the assessment of current food selection and food-related concerns; the construction of individual hierarchies for graded exposure; and the evaluation of treatment outcomes with reference to fear and avoidance of food items. It is comprised of 180 commonly eaten foods rated on three dimensions: fear/guilt, appeal in the absence of weight concern, and frequency of consumption. Dieting and non-dieting college women were compared to provide preliminary data on the FPS from a non-clinical population. The FPS yielded findings convergent with other data on forbidden foods and discriminated between dieters and non-dieters. For both groups, the perception that foods were fattening was correlated with increased fear/guilt, with dieters showing significantly greater increases in ratings of fear/guilt and number of feared foods with increments in the perceived ‘fatteningness’ of food items.