Parents often unaware children are overweight
Nearly 70 per cent of parents of overweight children are unaware of their offspring’s weight problem, scientists have found.
Dr Angela Jones told the European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam last week (7 May) parents often fail to recognise their child’s overweight status but have an important role to play in the prevention of this increasing public health problem. Methods of improving parental ability to identify the issue are urgently needed.
Attempts to address the rising rates of unhealthy weight gain in children have had limited success and effective preventive approaches are urgently needed.
The work is funded by the National Prevention Research Initiative (NPRI), a funding initiative of UK government departments, research councils and medical charities. The Medical Research Council is one of the NPRI partners and manages the Initiative on behalf of the partnership (see below).
The study found more than two-thirds of parents of overweight or obese children incorrectly identified their child’s weight as ‘normal’.
Of the 39 children correctly identified as being ‘overweight’, 26 were in fact obese according to international criteria.
Parents’ attitudes towards the issue included scepticism towards media messages and a perceived lack of relevance to their child’s school or community. Findings from the study suggest that parental notions of overweight and obesity have moved with the societal shift in ‘normal’ weight.
“I sometimes wonder if it’s a bit over hyped… just reading in the press it just sounds as if there’s … millions, like about half of the children are obese.”
Another parent said:
“There are a couple of children in [child’s name] class who are large I would say… but I think they’re the exception”.
The research forms part of the Gateshead Millennium Study (GMS), a project investigating childhood growth and related characteristics from birth in a cohort of 1029 children born in 1999/2000.
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This NPRI project was supported by the following funding partners: British Heart Foundation; Cancer Research UK; Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Government Health Directorate; Department of Health; Diabetes UK; Economic and Social Research Council; Food Standards Agency; Health & Social Care Research & Development Office for Northern Ireland; Medical Research Council; Welsh Assembly Government; and World Cancer Research Fund. A total of 16 organisations now support the Initiative.
