Introduction: the emotional state influences the selection of foods that an individual consumes. In Colombia, no tool allows to detect the people most susceptible to develop emotional intake. Objective: to validate the Emotional Intake Questionnaire-Garaulet in a student population of the National University of Colombia. Methods: a cross-sectional descriptive observational study was conducted with a convenience sample of students in all the University's campuses in two stages employing the Spanish and the Colombian questionnaires through e-mail. Two questions were included in the survey, to assess the emotions of sadness and anxiety; a linearity relationship was established with the cut-off scores to maintain proportionality and preserve the dimensions of the study phenomenon. Results: in phase 1, 1177 subjects participated, and in phase 2, 831 subjects participated. Of these, 63.6 % and 52.8 % were emotional and very emotional eaters in the Colombian and Spanish versions, respectively. Taking the total amount of people, 22.3 % were emotional and very emotional eaters with body mass index > 25 kg/m². In addition, 4.7 % had an eating disorder and 14.2 % had a psychiatric disorder. Finally, sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values were 99.0 %, 49.3 %, 89.9 % and 91.2 %, respectively. Conclusions: the Colombian version of the Emotional Eating Questionnaire demonstrates acceptable validity and reliability compared to the Spanish version. A high prevalence of emotional eaters was observed in the university population, which could be detected early through the use of this questionnaire. Suffering from this disorder is a risk factor for developing obesity and other metabolic diseases in the future.