Association between weight perception and socioeconomic status among adults in the Seychelles

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Heba Alwan¹  Fred Paccaud¹  Pascal Bovet²  Bharathi Viswanathan³  Julita Williams³ 

[1] Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (IUMSP), University Hospital Centre and University of Lausanne, Rue du Bugnon 17, 1005, Lausanne, Switzerland;Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (IUMSP), University Hospital Centre and University of Lausanne, Rue du Bugnon 17, 1005, Lausanne, Switzerland;Ministry of Health and Social Development, Victoria, Seychelles;Ministry of Health and Social Development, Victoria, Seychelles;

关键词: Body Dissatisfaction;    Weight Perception;    Overweight Participant;    Body Size Ideal;    Body Weight Dissatisfaction;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-467

 received in 2010-01-08, accepted in 2010-08-09,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundFew studies have examined the association between weight perception and socioeconomic status (SES) in sub-Saharan Africa, and none made this association based on education, occupation and income simultaneously.MethodsBased on a population-based survey (n = 1255) in the Seychelles, weight and height were measured and self-perception of one's own body weight, education, occupation, and income were assessed by a questionnaire. Individuals were considered to have appropriate weight perception when their self-perceived weight matched their actual body weight.ResultsThe prevalence of overweight and obesity was 35% and 28%, respectively. Multivariate analysis among overweight/obese persons showed that appropriate weight perception was directly associated with actual weight, education, occupation and income, and that it was more frequent among women than among men. In a model using all three SES indicators together, only education (OR = 2.5; 95% CI: 1.3-4.8) and occupation (OR = 2.3; 95% CI: 1.2-4.5) were independently associated with appropriate perception of being overweight. The OR reached 6.9 [95% CI: 3.4-14.1] when comparing the highest vs. lowest categories of SES based on a score including all SES indicators and 6.1 [95% CI: 3.0-12.1] for a score based on education and occupation.ConclusionsAppropriately perceiving one's weight as too high was associated with different SES indicators, female sex and being actually overweight. These findings suggest means and targets for clinical and population-based interventions for weight control. Further studies should examine whether these differences in weight perception underlie differences in cognitive skills, healthy weight norms, or body size ideals.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Alwan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.