Validating the Italian version of the Adult Picky Eating Questionnaire. (October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Menghi, Leonardo; Endrizzi, Isabella; Cliceri, Danny; Zampini, Massimiliano; Giacalone, Davide; Gasperi, Flavia
• Is Part Of: Food quality and preference. Volume 101(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-10
• Subjects: Picky eating -- Selective eating -- Disordered eating -- Food neophobia -- Italian -- Mediterranean diet; Food preferences -- Periodicals; Food -- Quality -- Periodicals; Food industry and trade -- Quality control -- Periodicals; Préférences alimentaires -- Périodiques; Aliments -- Qualité -- Périodiques; Aliments -- Industrie et commerce -- Qualité -- Contrôle -- Périodiques; Food industry and trade -- Quality control; Food preferences; Food -- Quality; Periodicals; 664
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2022.104647
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-3293

Abstract

Abstract: Interest in adult picky eating (PE), i.e., the unwillingness to eat familiar foods or try novel foods, has grown rapidly in the last decade as a result of its negative health consequences. Fairly poor data are available on the prevalence of PE in Italy, mostly due to the lack of a psychometrically sound tool to measure this construct. Thus, this contribution aimed at translating and validating the 20-item Adult Picky Eating Questionnaire (APEQ) for use in the Italian context. The APEQ was translated into Italian (IT-APEQ) following a standard forward–backward procedure and administered online to a large cohort of Italian adults (N = 1030, 69.9% women, 18–75 yo), who also completed a series of psychometric and dietary measures to test both the convergent and discriminant validity of the IT-APEQ. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original four-factor structure of APEQ. The IT-APEQ showed invariance across genders, good internal consistency, and strong test–retest reliability (N = 599, 70.5% women, 18–75 yo). As expected, the IT-APEQ was positively associated with eating inflexibility, food neophobia, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and disgust propensity/sensitivity, whereas it was anticorrelated with indices of diet variety. Moreover, we documented for the first time a negative link between adult PE and adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Our results suggest that the IT-APEQ demonstrates sound psychometric properties. Hence, we advocate its future usage to shed light into other correlates of PE in the Italian context and bolster cross-cultural research on adult PE, which is key to developing targeted strategies aimed at improving diet diversity and quality.