How denial is making our kids fatter

The Journal of American Medical Association found that more than one-third of adolescents were either overweight or obese.

Dr. David Katz, founding director of Yale University Prevention Research Center, recently wrote a piece for Huffington Post that warns against the dangers of denying our children are overweight:

Two recent studies address the dangers of what I have opted to call our relative obliviousness to prevailing obesity in our kids: "oblivobesity." The first report, issued by the CDC on July 23, used a representative sample of children and adolescents in the U.S. to compare actual weight with perceptions of weight. The principal finding was that more than 80 percent of overweight boys and 70 percent of overweight girls misperceived their weight as "normal." The frequency of such misperception declined as socioeconomic status rose, indicating that families with more resources were more likely to have heightened awareness of healthy weight.

A related paper, published about a week later in Preventing Chronic Disease, also compared actual and perceived weight in a nationally representative cohort of children and adolescents. The researchers then went on to look at the correlation of these measures with attempted weight loss. As in the earlier paper, a high percentage of kids -- and their parents -- underestimated their weight. This group was roughly three times less likely to attempt weight loss than overweight kids who accurately assessed their weight.

Katz joins The Daily Circuit to discuss healthy ways to talk about a child's weight.