May 07, 2015
Almost all parents of overweight children are oblivious about their kids' weight according to a recent study, Medical News Today reports.
The study, published in the journal "Childhood Obesity," was conducted by researchers from New York University School of Medicine's NYU Langone Medical Center, Georgia Southern University and Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
Data from physical examinations and interviews were drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The researchers studied two groups of children aged 2-5 years old in the US over the time periods 1988-94 and 2007-12. Each group totaled more than 3,000 children.
Respectively across the two study groups, 97 percent and 95 percent of parents of overweight boys and 88 percent and 93 percent of parents with overweight girls considered their child to be the right weight.
Though the children in the 2007-12 study group were significantly more overweight than those in the 1988-94 group, the parental perceptions of kids' weight "remained relatively unchanged."
Furthermore, the study found that weight misperception was stronger among low-income and African-American families.
Read more from Medical News Today.
