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

Abstract

This study aimed to reveal the relationship between eating behavior and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)/metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in young adults and suggest a questionnaire for eating behavior assessment. We included 322 male graduate students at Gifu University. Diagnoses of NAFLD and MASLD 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 MASLD using logistic regression, decision tree, and random forest analyses. The median age of the participants was 22 years, and 16% and 11% had NAFLD and MASLD, respectively. The EBQ total score was significantly higher in participants with MASLD than in those without MASLD (102 vs. 90 points, P = 0.006) and in those with NAFLD than in those without NAFLD (97 vs. 90 points, P = 0.007). Among eating behavior categories, the decision tree and random forest analyses revealed that “perception of constitution and weight” was the strongest contributor for NAFLD/MASLD. Our study revealed that eating behavior assessed with the EBQ is robustly associated with NAFLD and MASLD in young male adults.