Development and Psychometric Validation of a Brief Sweet Addiction Scale (BSAS) in English, Spanish, and Hungarian

Abstract Habitual overconsumption of sweets and ultra-processed foods contributes to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and eating-related psychopathology. Some patients report losing control specifically over sweets rather than over food in general. Currently, no brief multilingual psychometric instrument exists to assess potential addiction to sweets. Therefore, this study developed and evaluated the Brief Sweet Addiction Scale (BSAS), a six-item measure based on the components model of addictions. A convenience sample of 1,130 adults (English n = 437; Spanish n = 300; Hungarian n = 393) completed the BSAS and the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (YFAS 2.0) online. Confirmatory factor analyses provided initial support for a unidimensional structure, although fit was less satisfactory in the Hungarian sample. Internal consistency was good to excellent (Cronbach’s α = .87–.92), and measurement invariance was supported at the configural, metric, scalar, and strict levels. The BSAS scores correlated with YFAS 2.0 severity in the total sample (r = .61), and this association remained positive within each language group after adjusting for age, sex, and BMI. The heterotrait–monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) provided preliminary evidence that the BSAS captures a construct distinguishable from general food-addiction symptoms (pooled HTMT = .745, 95% bootstrap CI [.697, .792]). As the first brief multilingual measure focused specifically on potentially addictive sweet consumption, the BSAS offers a practical tool for cross-cultural and behavioral research. These findings support further validation of the BSAS as a dimensional measure, while not establishing sweet addiction as a distinct clinical disorder or providing a diagnostic cut-off.