Report What happens when fat kids don’t know they’re fat anymore

tom_mai78101

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The kids are not all right. But they think they are.

A team of researchers at Georgia Southern University found an alarming rise in the lack of self awareness among children and teenagers in the United States. Specifically, way more overweight adolescents are oblivious today to the fact that they ought to lose weight than were in decades past—and it's a big problem.

"The trend is very dangerous," said Dr. Jian Zhang, who describes the phenomenon as a vicious cycle.

It's also very complicated. Teenagers suffer through a lot of things, including an acute pressure of appearance. As a result, this is a worry that stems from health concerns, but requires a difficult balance in educating young people without causing or furthering anxiety about body image.

The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an in-depth study of the nutritional status of adults and children in the United States, which tracked, among other things, the health of nearly 2,000 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 16 in the early 1990s and over 2,500 teenagers in the same age range between 2007 and 2012. As part of the study, participants' body mass index—which is a fairly reliable measure of obesity among children, though less so among adults—was collected, along with the response to this rather straightforward question: "Do you consider yourself to be overweight, underweight, or just about the right weight?"

When the two were juxtaposed—what each adolescent said in response to the question, and what their corresponding BMI said about their weight—Zhang's team noticed a pretty clear trend: Far fewer kids believe that they are overweight today, even though many more of them should.

 
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thewrongvine

The Evolved Panda Commandant
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lol, so we need to just go around and tell fat kids they're fat whenever we see one.
 

tom_mai78101

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Or a better alternative: Move them to Europe and have them compare themselves with other European peers.
 

Accname

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I notice that I am getting a little bit fat. I started to bake choco muffins every now and then. I cant withstand them, they are so delicious.
 

Varine

And as the moon rises, we shall prepare for war
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No shit. We were specifically told that, as growing people, we shouldn't diet to lose or gain weight until we're older. Which sounds nice in spirit and emotions, but completely nulls the bigger aspect of eating healthy. Because if we aren't comfortable with who we are, we can never fulfill our dreams and will end up as laborers, making more money welding than the guy packaging your medicines.
 

tom_mai78101

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That's a 70's American Dream, which is no longer relevant in this day and age.
 
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