Mindful eating and eating behaviours in Greece: exploring the validity and reliability of two mindful eating scales and other eating behaviours for Greek-speaking populations

Background Mindful eating has seen an increase in clinical and non-clinical practices of changing health outcomes. Meanwhile, the restriction of not having validated scales in other languages proposes a barrier to exploring the impact of mindful eating cross-culturally, and specific to the present project, across Greek-speaking populations, limiting the potential of exploring the association with Mediterranean dieting.

Methods In the present research, volunteers (n = 706) completed online the Mindful Eating Behaviour Scale and the Mindful Eating Scale. A forward–backwards translation, leading to face validity, and was assessed for internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) and followed up by an assessment of the factorial structure of the scales. Divergent and convergent validity was explored using motivations to eat palatable foods, grazing, craving, Dusseldorf orthorexia, Salzburg emotional eating, and the Salzburg stress eating scales.

Results Results indicated that both scales displayed good internal consistency, and the assessment of the factorial structure of the scales was equally good and semi-consistent with the English versions, with parallel analyses and item loadings proposing problems that have been shown in critical review literature. Associations of mindful eating scales to other eating behaviours were replicated to previously established findings with English-speaking populations.

Conclusions Findings that deviated from the expected outcomes are central to the discussion on the measurement of mindful eating, and further direction highlights the way forward for researchers and clinicians.