Parents often blind to obesity

The battle against the childhood bulge has a new culprit: clueless parents.

While public awareness campaigns have been carping on the issue of childhood obesity for years, an Australian study released this week has found that mom and dad are not getting the message: Almost half of all parents of overweight children thought their kids were a normal weight.

The study also found roughly two in five parents of underweight children believed their kids were average weight and parents were more likely to report sons as underweight and daughters as overweight.

University of Melbourne researcher Pene Schmidt analyzed data from a survey of more than 2,100 Australian children aged 4 to 12 and their parents. She compared standard measures of children's size - body mass index and waist circumference - with parental perceptions and found that the two rarely jibed.

The results come as little surprise to Canadian researchers.

"Parents have poor judgment when it comes to child weight issues," said Paul Veugelers, Canada Research Chair in Population Health at the University of Alberta. "They are usually very far off when you ask whether their children are obese."

In a 2006 Canadian Medical Association survey, 9 per cent of Canadian parents reported having an overweight child.

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