Food Craving Inventory — United Kingdom cultural adaptation

The Food Craving Inventory – UK (FCI-UK) is a culturally adapted British version of the original Food Craving Inventory, designed to assess the frequency and phenomenology of food cravings within a UK context (Nicholls & Hulbert-Williams, 2013) . Food cravings are defined as intense, food-specific desires that are difficult to resist and are conceptually distinct from general hunger. Cravings have been associated with dieting failure, binge eating, and obesity, and therefore represent an important construct in both research and clinical practice. Because food craving patterns are culturally sensitive, direct use of the original US inventory risked reduced validity in British samples.The FCI-UK was developed through systematic item adaptation and pilot testing to ensure cultural relevance. The final version retained conceptual continuity with the original instrument while incorporating foods more typical of British dietary patterns. Exploratory factor analysis supported a four-factor structure comprising sweet foods, fast foods, high-fat foods, and complex carbohydrates. In addition to measuring craving frequency, the inventory assesses difficulty resisting cravings and the tendency to “give in,” providing a more nuanced assessment of craving-related behaviour. Psychometric evaluation demonstrated acceptable internal consistency for the overall scale and subscales, and meaningful associations with external eating and dietary restraint, supporting convergent and divergent validity. The FCI-UK is appropriate for use in non-clinical and clinical populations and may be particularly useful in intervention studies examining eating behaviour, binge eating, dieting outcomes, or weight-related variables.APA reference:Nicholls, W., & Hulbert-Williams, L. (2013). British English translation of the Food Craving Inventory (FCI-UK). Appetite, 67, 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2013.03.010