This study asked whether adults with ADHD judge food pictures differently from adults without ADHD. It included 172 university undergraduates aged 19 to 40 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Of these, 59 had an ADHD diagnosis and 113 did not. People on special diets, such as vegetarians, or with health conditions that shape food choice, such as diabetes, were left out. The two groups were alike in age, sex, family status, body weight and hunger. Most of the students with ADHD reported no medication use.
Students rated how appealing 32 food pictures looked on a screen. Attractive foods were rated as clearly more appealing than plain ones. Convenient foods were rated as more appealing than less convenient ones. The authors say attractiveness mattered more than convenience. How hungry the students were also made a difference.
Students with ADHD gave about the same ratings as the others. There was no clear sign that the cues worked differently in the two groups. This held when medication use was taken into account, and when ADHD symptom scores were used in place of the diagnosis.
The authors note several limits. All students came from one faculty focused on food and the environment, which may have shaped what they knew about healthy eating. The ADHD group seemed to be high-functioning. The task was new and used pictures, not real food.
The authors suggest that obesity programs for people with ADHD could include healthy foods that are convenient and attractive, a view based on picture ratings by adult university students.
The numbers Stats and what the terms mean
The statistics behind the plain-language claims above.
- Hershko, 2020: effect of attractiveness on appeal ratings, F = 637.46, p < .001.
- Hershko, 2020: effect of convenience on appeal ratings, F = 36.65, p < .001 in Table 2 (the abstract reports p = .005 for the same effect, and the paper does not reconcile the two).
- Hershko, 2020: difference in appeal between the ADHD and control groups, F = .02, p = .83.
- Hershko, 2020: whether attractiveness worked differently by group, F = .47, p = .50.
- Hershko, 2020: whether convenience worked differently by group, F = .64, p = .43.
- Hershko, 2020: effect of GHQ score on appeal ratings, F = .24, p = .62.
- Hershko, 2020: effect of hunger on appeal ratings, F = 10.85, with the p-value printed as .001 and no operator shown. What the terms mean:
- F A test result from the analysis comparing groups and conditions; a larger value means a bigger difference compared with the normal spread in the ratings.
- p How likely a result this large would be if there were no real effect; a value below .05 is usually read as unlikely to be down to chance.
Source: Hershko S, Cortese S, Ert E, et al.. The influence of attractiveness and convenience cues on food appeal in adults with and without ADHD. Appetite (2020). doi:10.1016/j.appet.2020.104679