Satisfied or unaware? Racial differences in perceived weight status
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Research
Satisfied or unaware? Racial differences in perceived weight status Gary G Bennett*1,2 and Kathleen Y Wolin3 Address: 1Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, 2Center for Community-Based Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, USA and 3Department of Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA Email: Gary G Bennett* - [email protected]; Kathleen Y Wolin - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 12 November 2006 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2006, 3:40 5868-3-40
doi:10.1186/1479-
Received: 09 June 2006 Accepted: 12 November 2006
This article is available from: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/3/1/40 © 2006 Bennett and Wolin; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Obesity is disproportionately prevalent among many racial/ethnic minority communities. The efficacy of weight control efforts in these groups may depend on individual's ability to accurately perceive their weight status. We examined whether racial/ethnic differences exist in weight status misperception among overweight adults. Methods: Nationally-representative data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2002 were examined. Participants included overweight and obese adult men (n = 3115) and women (n = 3437). Weight status misperception was identified among respondents who self-reported being "about the right weight/underweight." Results: Blacks (OR = 2.06, 95% CI: 1.71, 2.54) were twice as likely and Hispanics (OR = 1.70, 95%CI: 1.33, 2.17) were 70-percent more likely than Whites to misperceive their weight, in models adjusted for age, education, income, marital status, self-reported health, and self-reported medical diagnosis of overweight. Black overweight (OR = 2.03, 95% CI: 1.26, 3.26) and obese (OR = 3.56, 95% CI: 1.57, 8.11) women were considerably more likely to exhibit misperception compared to their White female counterparts. Odds of misperception were higher among overweight Black (OR = 2.20, 95%CI: 1.54, 3.15), Hispanic (OR = 1.89, 95% CI: 1.30, 2.75), and obese Black men (OR = 2.84, 95% CI: 1.54, 5.22), compared to White men. Conclusion: Weight status misperceptions among the overweight are more common among Blacks, and Hispanic men. The persistence of racial/ethnic differences after adjustment for medical diagnosis of overweight may suggest some resistance to physician weight counseling. Identifying strategies to correct weight status misperceptions status may be necessary to ensure the efficacy of clinical and public health obesity interventions conducted among these groups.
Introduction The epidemic of obesity in the US
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