"I'm not fat" - survey shows people no longer able to recognise being overweight

13/07/2008

More and more people are failing to recognise they are overweight, despite an actual rise in the number of people who are clinically “overweight” or “obese” - according to research published in the British Medical Journal. So just how far has people’s perception of their weight changed with the growing obesity epidemic?

Researchers from University College London (UCL) have compared statistics taken from two household surveys in 1999 and 2007, in which participants were asked to give their height and weight - and also categorise themselves as either: ‘very underweight’, ‘underweight’, ‘about right’, ‘overweight’ or ‘very overweight’. The 2007 survey also added ‘obese’ as a new category.

The proportion of respondents whose weight placed them in the clinically obese category had nearly doubled in eight years from 11% in 1999 to 19% in 2007, yet those whose weight put them in the overweight category were less likely to think that they were overweight in 2007 than in 1999. In 1999, 43% of the population had a Body Mass Index (BMI) that put them in the overweight or obese range, of whom 81% correctly identified themselves as overweight.

But in 2007, 53% of the population had a BMI in the overweight or obese range - but only 75% of these correctly classed themselves as overweight.

The researchers suggest that the growing division between actual and perceived weight may be due to mild overweight and overweight becoming 'normal' in the population. And these perceptions are reinforced by media images of people who are morbidly obese, which add to the misconception that extremely high weights are required to meet the medical criteria for overweight. This can also increase the stigma attached to the labels ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’.

The authors warn that despite media and health campaigns aimed at raising awareness of healthy weight, increasing numbers of overweight people are failing to recognise that their weight is a cause for concern - or that messages about healthy eating and exercise are even aimed at them at all.