A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.
Abstract
Only if their child was in or above the 99.7th centile of the BMI, did parents judge them overweight.
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Black JA, Park M et al. Br J Gen Pract 2015; 10.3399/bjgp15X684385
And, it was more likely that parents did not recognise their child was overweight if they are 'black or South Asian, male, more deprived, or the child was older.' A child is categorised as obese if their BMI is greater than or equal to the 95th centile (healthy weight 2nd–85th centile). This cross-sectional study recruited 4–5- and 10–11-year-old-English children and their parents (n = 2,976 complete data sets). The BMI of each child was measured and the parents were invited to answer a questionnaire asking their perceived view of their child's weight. It was conceded that the low response rate of only 15% could lead to non-response bias. These investigators conclude that as parents did not recognise that their child is overweight, they cannot possibly adopt strategies to address calorific imbalance. A population approach to tackle childhood obesity, would be to impose a sugar tax. But then it is argued 'a sugar tax is simply a tax on the poor'.
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Child obesity cut-offs as derived from parental perceptions: cross-sectional questionnaire. Br Dent J 219, 489 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2015.887
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2015.887