Who knows what ‘healthy weight’ looks like?

Abstract

Background Obesity is a global epidemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight and had corresponding increases in well-recognised, associated chronic diseases. Aims This study aimed to explore whether the general population is able to identify a healthy BMI and accurately perceive their own BMI using a visual scale. Method A cross-sectional, population-based survey of 103 participants were shown a visual scale of computer-generated images representing different BMIs and asked to identify: (1) which images represented a healthy body weight; (2) which image best represented their body; and (3) whether they thought they were a healthy or unhealthy body size. Conclusion Overweight participants were significantly less likely to correctly identify their own BMI on a visual scale (38.9 per cent, p<0.001), compared to participants who were obese (88 per cent) or healthy weight (73 per cent). This research suggests that people who are overweight may require assistance to identify that they are overweight, in order to begin to address the associated health issues. BACKGROUND Obesity is a global epidemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975; in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight, and of these over 650 million were obese. Excess body weight is a well-known risk factor associated with numerous chronic diseases and some malignancies.