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Obesity Rates May Be Higher as Parents Go Light When Reporting Kid's Weight
Filed under: In The News, Diet & Fitness, Research Reveals: Babies, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Research Reveals: Teens
More than 23 million U.S. kids and teenagers are battling obesity. Credit: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images
Fibbing about your weight on your driver's license? That's practically the norm. Under-reporting how much your kids weigh? Apparently, that's not uncommon, either.
As we enter the first National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, scientists say under-reporting children's weight may be a widespread problem. In fact, estimates of obesity and body mass index (BMI) based on data supplied by parents may actually miss one in five obese children, according to a press release from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).
Researchers at the organization's annual summer conference compared the height and weight of 1,430 children at an orthopedic clinic with the numbers their parents reported, and found almost half the parents were off on their measurements.
"Parents tend to overestimate boys' height and underestimate girls' height," the study's lead author, Dr. Daniel O'Connor, says in the release, adding that the error was larger when the parent reporting was the opposite sex of the child.
The reporting errors also tended to be larger for girls and in children who were overweight or obese, and increased with the age of the child, the study found.
Ethnicity also plays a role, the authors say, with African-American and Hispanic parents making larger errors than Caucasian and non-Hispanic parents.
These findings are notable in light of soaring obesity rates in all age groups of U.S. children, which show a fourfold increase in kids ages 6 to 11. Nearly 32 percent of American children and teenagers -- more than 23 million -- are overweight or obese, according to the release, which reports that health and medical experts now consider obesity an epidemic in this country.
The findings underscore the importance of September's National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, which was established earlier this year by Congress, and is supported by the American Medical Association (AMA).
"Obesity kills more Americans every year than AIDS, all cancers and all accidents combined," Dr. Mary Anne McCaffree, AMA board member, said in a recent news release. "It is causing health problems in children that were unthinkable 30 years ago. That is why the AMA is working to halt the spread of obesity."
For more information about childhood obesity, visit the Healthier Kids, Brighter Futures website, created for parents in support of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month.
Related: Lack of Sleep in Babies a Cause of Childhood Obesity, Study Finds
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
9-08-2010 @ 8:36PM
ginione2 said...Where are they reporting weight and heighth to? I've never had to do that with my children. Who's business is it? I agree that there are alot of over weight kids, but, why is it necessary to report this at all? Who is keeping tabs?
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9-08-2010 @ 8:40PM
onemom said...I have to report their current height and weight when enrolling my kids in soccer each year. I imagine other sports leagues require the same.
9-08-2010 @ 8:36PM
tjk said...THATS BECAUSE LAZY PARENTS WHO TAKE THE KIDS FOR FAST FOOD SIX DAYS A WEEK WON'T ADMIT IT...
Reply
9-08-2010 @ 8:39PM
Rebecca said...Wow, those are some scary findings. What are we doing with our children (or aren't doing, as the case may be)!! I see this all the time, some five, six, seven-year-old child that weighs more than my thirteen-year-old son. It should be a crime to set a child up for failure in life like that, most of the time they'll never recover from it and just raise their kids the same way. I've told ppl for a long time, we used to be increasing our lifespans, now it will begin to shorten. I guess we don't have room on this planet for all these ppl, anyway. It's sort of like survival of the fittest, right? Harsh, but true.
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9-08-2010 @ 9:07PM
teresa said...parents are mostly responsible when kids are fat, even older kids because they learned from the parents or weren't taught to eat healthy. The food pyramid has changed a lot since I was that young and fad diets have come and gone and a brief experience with gestational diabetes taught me some new tricks. take the video games and the chips away from the kids and help them find something active to do and something healthy to eat. even when they cry at dinner, find a vegetable they will eat. keep introducing them to new foods. yes, I have two boys and I don't let them eat like I was allowed to as a kid and they are healthy and slender and like many more veggies than I did as a child.
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