ABC’s and 123’s: Parental Literacy, Numeracy, and Childhood Obesity

摘要

In 2003, the National Assessment of Adult Literacyn(NAAL) found that approximately 90 million Americansnhave basic or below basic literacy skills and that 110nmillion have basic or poor quantitative (numeracy) skills.1nLow literacy and numeracy skills are independently associatednwith poor understanding of health information, poornhealth behaviors, and poor clinical outcomes.2 In the contextnof nutrition and obesity, low health literacyumeracy isnassociated with worse knowledge about breastfeeding, difficultynunderstanding food labels and portion sizes and highernbody mass index (BMI) in adults.3–5 In 2003, Surgeon GeneralnRichard Carmona acknowledged that health literacy is anmajor problem in the United States, and recognized that lownhealth literacy is likely “one of the largest contributors to ournnation’s epidemic of overweight and obesity.”