Middle schoolers overweight but parents don't realize it--study

ReutersHealth reports on two new studies. One shows that nearly 50% of U.S. middle schoolers are overweight or close to it, and another shows that neither parents nor children are aware of the problem:

Part of the problem, she said, is that "overweight is now seen as the norm." The UK researcher noted that some parents of normal-weight children were concerned that their children were underweight. . . .

In the American study, which included 1,700 eighth-grade students, nearly 50 percent were overweight or were at risk of being overweight, lead researcher Dr. Francine Kaufman of Children's Hospital of Los Angeles told Reuters Health in an interview.

Kaufman and her colleagues found that about 40 percent of children had pre-diabetes, which is marked by above-normal levels of blood glucose. In addition, nearly half of the students had low levels of HDL, the "good" form of cholesterol, and many had blood pressure that was above normal for their age.