Respecting cultural values of toddler weight perception while discouraging parental overfeeding

摘要

With our focus on anticipatory guidance, we pediatricians are called on by our professional societies as well as First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to monitor weight trends and counsel appropriately at younger and younger ages. However, our medical assessment of weight status and health impact can conflict with parents' (and even our own) perceptions of healthy weight; for we all live in a world where the obesity trend has skyrocketed faster than our cultural values and perceptions can change. In this issue of the Archives, Hager et al1 provide a well-written Exhibit A of this effect. Similar to a wealth of literature on older children, they report that mothers of overweight toddlers (aged 12-32 months) were 87% less likely to be accurate in their weight perceptions than were mothers of healthy weight toddlers.