Its hardly a surprising conclusion. The more overweight we are, the more we seem to underestimate our own obesity problems and, more troublesome, those of our children.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York asked 111 women and 111 children questions about their age, income and body size, and also measured their height and weight. They were asked to identify their body shapes based on silhouettes representing underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obesity. Sixty six percent of the mothers interviewed were overweight, thirty nine percent of the kids were too heavy. Eighty two percent of those overweight mothers underestimated their own weight when estimating based on the silhouettes. Eighty six percent of overweight kids did the same thing. Forty seven percent of moms also underestimated their children’s weight as well as their own.
In contrast, only thirteen percent of kids and fifteen percent of mothers who fell in the healthy weight range only underestimated their own weights in silhouette.
Pediatrician Claire McCarthy of Children’s Hospital Boston told USA Today that many of her parents have trouble judging what a healthy weight for their child is. ”Parents come in and say that their child is too thin, but on the growth charts, he’s a normal weight or even slightly overweight,” she told the newspaper. “There are so many overweight children out there that a normal-weight child looks thin. The norm has become overweight.”
Lead researcher Nicole Dumas, an internal medicine resident at Columbia, told USA that his study points to the fact that this may be a broader trend. A trend that may make it harder for Americans to stay healthy. ”We’re working on accruing a larger sample size to see if it applies to everyone,” Dumas tells the newspaper. “The take-home message is that to address the obesity epidemic, we have to address body image misperception.”
