Rodríguez-Martín, B. C., & Gallego-Arjiz, B. (2018). Overeaters Anonymous: A Mutual-Help Fellowship for Food Addiction Recovery. Frontiers in Psychology, 9
, 1491. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01491
From the research article’s abstract: “The notion that overeating can be an addictive behavior has been accepted by many individuals who suffer from this problem. Overeaters Anonymous (OA) is a 12-step mutual help group founded in 1960 to support individuals who perceive themselves as food addicts (Suler and Barthelomew, 1986). However, the concept of food addiction is highly controversial (Meule, 2015). Furthermore, there is no consensus regarding whether addictive-like eating should be conceptualized as a substance-related (Schulte et al., 2015) or a behavioral addiction (Hebebrand et al., 2014). Because of this, the core concept of this article is perceived food addiction (PFA) rather than an objective and clinically accepted definition of food addiction. OA members share an abnormal relationship with food. They also share numerous failed attempts to overcome this problem (Russell-Mayhew et al., 2010).