New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that a majority of overweight children believe they are a healthy weight.
Roughly 81 percent of overweight boys and 71 percent of overweight girls between the ages of 8 and 15 believe they are the correct weight. The CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which looked at data from 2005 to 2012, estimated that 9.1 million overweight American youth don't believe they are overweight.
Overweight kids weren't the only ones who misread their health status, though. Kids who were not obese reported that they were, while others considered themselves underweight who weren't.
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Dr. Daniel Neides, medical director at the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, suggests that the children's misreporting is because of their families. If a child's parents are overweight, the child may see that as normal, Dr. Neides told Time. Previous studies have also found that parents misunderstand their children's weight, which exacerbates the problem.
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