Study: Overweight teens actually eat fewer calories than thinner peers

“For older children and teenagers, increasing involvement in physical activity may be more important to weight and health than is their child’s diet,” said study researcher Asheley Cockrell Skinner, an assistant professor of health policy and pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Parents of all children should aim for a healthy diet, but don’t assume that overweight children are eating any worse than their peers,” she said.

The findings may provide validation for overweight teens facing a frustrating reality: they eat less than their normal-weight peers, yet continue to weigh more.

“I think our findings are particularly important from a social perspective,” Cockrell Skinner said. “It’s easy for society to make assumptions that kids are eating a lot of junk, which can also imply blame for their obesity, but the research doesn’t bear that out.”