Parents are confused about how to measure children’s weight
A study by Pene Schmidt, released last month, has the plug: 4 In 10 Parents Wrong On Whether Their Child Is Under Or Overweight. While this is an interesting statistic it seems that the study also identified that:
…different methods of assessing children’s weight – such as BMI or waist circumference – result in different rates of children being identified as overweight or underweight.
In my mind, given that the BMI (Body Mass Index) is at best useful for aggregate body size statistics, rather than a reliable indicator of health on a personal level, it would seem that relating any study to BMI is poor science. The BMI does not take into account, body type, fat and muscle ratios, distribution of muscle and bone mass, etc.
In the same article Science Daily reports that Ms. Schmidt:
…compared objective measures of children’s weight – such as Body Mass Index and waist circumference – with subjective perceptions of whether parents and children thought they were overweight, average weight or underweight.
If BMI is unreliable as a healthy weight indicator it certainly makes no sense to use as a yardstick. The BMI intro in Wikipedia identifies:
Due to its ease of measurement and calculation, it is the most widely used diagnostic tool to identify obesity problems within a population.
Note the last word in the sentence. Take a look at the Limitations and Shortcomings section in the same article.
While Ms. Schmidt’s study had a number of interesting findings about parental attitude towards their children’s weight, any findings about the accuracy of parent’s perception of child weight should be viewed with serious skepticism. It is startling that a scientist wouldn’t choose a better metric.
Thanks to Science Daily for the link.
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