COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Substance Use Disorders and Behavioral Addictions
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1630084
This article is part of the Research TopicUltra-Processed Food Addiction: Moving toward Consensus on Mechanisms, Definitions, Assessment, and InterventionView all 11 articles
The MFM Program: A Successful Model in the Field of Food Addiction Recovery
Provisionally accepted
Esther Helga Gudmundsdottir1*
Veronique Rynn2- 1INFACT School, Reykjavik, Iceland
- 2Arizona State University, Tempe, United States
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This article outlines how one program in Iceland, the MFM program, is helping clients recover from food addiction and ultra-processed food addiction. The MFM program, founded and developed by Esther Helga Gudmundsdottir (EG), arose from her own recovery from food addiction. Seeing the gap in services for clients with food addiction and ultra-processed food addiction, EG set out to develop a treatment plan based on everything she learned over the years and through her experience and trainings.The term "food addiction" was first introduced in the medical literature in 1956 by Theron Randolph (Randolph, 1956). Since then, the concept of food addiction has gained greater understanding and acceptance. Since 2006, the number of studies on food addiction have increased dramatically, indicating a greater awareness and acceptance of this disease (Meule, 2015). The term "ultra-processed food addiction" has also gained greater acceptance in recent years as correlations are being found between obesity and increased ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption (LaFata, Allison, Audrain-McGovern and Forman, 2024).Educational Center for Food Addiction Counseling and Treatment), an outpatient center for food
Keywords: food addiction, Abstinence, Recovery, 12-step facilitation, ultra-processed
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gudmundsdottir and Rynn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Esther Helga Gudmundsdottir, INFACT School, Reykjavik, Iceland
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