Introduction:

Overweight and childhood obesity increase the risk of suffering from chronic degenerative diseases. The best-known causes to develop them are the little energy expenditure and the addiction to food.

Objective:

To evaluate the association between food addiction and BMI in a Mexican population aged 10 to 16 years using the Yale food addiction scale for children (YFAS-C).

Material and methods:

Cross-sectional, descriptive study survey was conducted during May and June 2018, where the YFAS-C scale was applied. A multivariate logistic regression model was implemented for the inferential analysis adjusting it by age and sex.

Results:

We have obtained 349 children with an age of 13.28 ± 1.48 (SD) years. There were 42 children with food addiction; 55 with a tendency to develop food addiction. We found that the increasing BMI the probability of being prone to food addiction by 20% and 24% becoming addicted to food in children. It was found that age and BMI were two risk factors

Conclusions:

We suggest more studies compelling other variables to achieve a comprehensive vision of the problem in Mexican children and adolescents.