Mindful Eating Scale

The Mindful Eating Scale (MES) was developed to assess mindfulness specifically within the domain of eating behaviour (Hulbert-Williams et al., 2014). While general mindfulness measures assume that mindful awareness generalises across life domains, evidence for such transfer has been limited. The MES was designed to capture the core components of mindfulness—attention/awareness and non-judgement/acceptance—explicitly in relation to food and eating. The original 29-item scale (subsequently refined to 28 items) demonstrated a six-factor structure and has been used in research examining eating behaviour, obesity, emotional eating, and related constructs.

Since its initial publication, the MES has been translated and validated in multiple cultural contexts, including Brazilian Portuguese (Salvo et al., 2023), Arabic (Fekih-Romdhane et al., 2023), Greek (Mantzios et al., 2023), and Japanese (Takahashi et al., 2025). Additional adaptations have also appeared in other languages. These cross-cultural validations support the scale’s broader applicability in both research and clinical settings. The original English version of the MES, along with the shorter variant developed subsequently, can be accessed via Figshare.

Original Reference

Hulbert-Williams, L., Nicholls, W., Joy, J., & Hulbert-Williams, N. (2014). Initial validation of the Mindful Eating Scale. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-013-0227-5  

Translation References

Salvo, V., Curado, D. F., Sanudo, A., Rezende, F. A. C., & Demarzo, M. (2023). Initial validation of the Brazilian Mindful Eating Scale among overweight and low-income women. Mindfulness, 14, 1162–1170. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02122-7  

Fekih-Romdhane, F., Malaeb, D., Fawaz, M., Chammas, N., Soufia, M., Obeid, S., & Hallit, S. (2023). Translation and validation of the mindful eating behaviour scale in the Arabic language. BMC Psychiatry, 23, 120. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-023-04614-1  

Mantzios, M., Zervos, K., Koletsi, M., & Giannou, K. (2023). Mindful eating and eating behaviours in Greece: Exploring the validity and reliability of two mindful eating scales for Greek-speaking populations. Eating and Weight Disorders, 28, 85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-023-01615-7  

Takahashi, M., Sekiya, D., Suzuki, T., & Morimoto, Y. (2025). Development of the Japanese version of the Mindful Eating Scale (MES). Japanese Psychological Research, 67, 246–259. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12450