2.9. Eating Motivation Visual Analogue Scale (VAS)

Every day, in the evening, after dinner and before going to sleep, hunger, fullness, desire to eat, satiety and prospective food consumption were recorded by using a 100 mm Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Each scale represents one of these five aspects and is recorded from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 10 points. The scale of hunger (question: “how hungry are you?”) ranged from the answer “not at all” to “as hungry as I have ever felt”; the scale of fullness (question: “how full are you?”) ranged from the answer “not at all” to “as full as I ever felt”; the scale of satiety (question: “how satiated are you?”) ranged from “not at all” to “extremely”; the scale of desire (question: “how strong is your desire to eat?”) ranged from “very weak” to “very strong”; the scale of prospective consumption (question: “how much do you think you could (or would want to) eat right now) ranged from “nothing at all” to “a very large amount”. The characteristics of these scales are the same as in the questionnaire by Blundell et al., from which questions were translated into Italian [25]. The reliability and validity of VAS as a tool for assessing motivation to eat in humans were reviewed by Stubbs et al. in 2000 [26].