Changing perceptions of weight in Great Britain: comparison of two population surveys

doi:10.1136/bmj.a494

Published 10 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a494
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a494

Research

Changing perceptions of weight in Great Britain: comparison of two population surveys

F Johnson, research fellow, L Cooke, senior research associate, H Croker, clinical research dietician, Jane Wardle, director of health behaviour research centre

¹ Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London WC1E 6BT

Correspondence to: J Wardle j.wardle{at}ucl.ac.uk

Objectives To examine changes in public perceptions of overweightin Great Britain over an eight year period.

Design Comparison of data on self perceived weight from populationsurveys in 1999 and 2007.

Setting Household surveys of two representative samples in GreatBritain.

Participants 853 men and 944 women in 1999, and 847 men and989 women in 2007.

Main outcome measures Participants were asked to report theirweight and height and classify their body size on a scale from"very underweight" to "obese."

Results Self reported weights increased dramatically over time,but the weight at which people perceived themselves to be overweightalso rose significantly. In 1999, 81% of overweight participantscorrectly identified themselves as overweight compared with75% in 2007, demonstrating a decrease in sensitivity in theself diagnosis of overweight.

Conclusions Despite media and health campaigns aiming to raiseawareness of healthy weight, increasing numbers of overweightpeople fail to recognise that their weight is a cause for concern.This makes it less likely that they will see calls for weightcontrol as personally relevant.

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