Obese kids in denial about their weight, US says

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New US government data suggest a non-medical cause of America’s childhood obesity crisis: denial.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 48 per cent of obese boys and 36 per cent of obese girls think their weight is “about right.” Among kids and teens who were merely overweight, 81 percent of boys and 71 percent of girls also judged their weight to be “about right.”

Those figures are based on interviews with American children who were between the ages of 8 and 15 during the years 2005 through 2012. As part of the CDC’s ongoing National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey, they had their height and weight measured and they answered questions from interviewers. Among them: “Do you consider yourself now to be fat or overweight, too thin or about the right weight?”

Overall, 30.2 per cent of the kids gave an answer that wasn’t in line with their actual body mass index, according to the report from the CDC’s National Centre for Health Statistics. That corresponds to about 9.1 million American kids who have the wrong idea about their weight status.