Usefulness of a questionnaire for assessing the relationship between eating behavior and fatty liver disease among Japanese male young adults

Abstract

Abstract This study aimed to reveal the relationship between eating behavior and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)/metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) in young adults and suggest a questionnaire for eating behavior assessment. We included 330 male graduate students at Gifu University in April 2022. Diagnoses of NAFLD and MAFLD were based on the presence of hepatic steatosis on ultrasonography. Eating behavior was assessed using the eating behavior questionnaire (EBQ) recommended by the Japan Society for the Study of Obesity. We assessed the eating behaviors associated with NAFLD and MAFLD using logistic regression, decision tree, and random forest analyses. The median age of the participants was 22 years, and 10% and 16% had NAFLD and MAFLD, respectively. The total EBQ score was significantly higher in participants with MAFLD than in those without MAFLD (102 vs. 91 points, P = 0.003) and in those with NAFLD than in those without NAFLD (97 vs. 91 points, P = 0.010). Among eating behavior categories, the decision tree and random forest analyses revealed that “perception of constitution and weight” was the strongest contributor for NAFLD/MAFLD. Our study revealed that eating behavior assessed with EBQ is robustly associated with NAFLD and MAFLD in young male adults.