Response to “The potential impact of body mass index, cognitive dissonance, and stigma”

Abstract

In this work, we found that leading people to believe they scored highly on food addiction resulted in increased dietary concern and reduced food intake. Vella and Pai propose three alternative explanations for the results, specifically body mass index (BMI), cognitive dissonance, and perceived stigmatization. We were unable to discuss these issues at length in our article due to the word limit; therefore, we are grateful for the opportunity to do so now.In the two studies reported in our article, the average BMI was within the healthy range (study 1: mean 6 SD 5 23.41 6 4.29 kg/m 2 ; study 2: 22.77 6 4.53 kg/m 2 ). In study 1, 14 and 4 participants (out of 64) had BMIs of over 25 and 30 kg/m 2 , respectively. Comparable numbers in study 2 were 16 and 3 (out of 90). We agree that the role of BMI may be pivotal, a point to which we alluded, albeit briefly, in the Discussion of our article (p. 1242). To explore this issue further, we have rerun our analyses with BMI as a covariate within the models and the results were unchanged. However, as indicated above, this may be due to the small number of participants with a BMI of over 30 kg/m 2 .