Self-evaluation of weight and eating habits among rural high school students

  Objective  To examine the distribution of body mass index (BMI), self-evaluation of weight, and prevalence of unhealthy eating behaviors among rural high school students for developing interventions on bias in self-evaluation of weight and promoting healthy eating behaviors among the students.

  Methods  We carried out an anonymous self-administered questionnaire survey among 1 810 students recruited with cluster sampling in a high school in Wuyuan county of Jiangxi province in May 2016. We adopted a revised Youth Risk Behavior Survey Questionnaire – Chinese Version in the survey.

  Results  Of all the students with a male to female ratio of 1.25:1, 346 (19.12%) and 523 (28.90%) reported under- and over-estimated self-body weight; 881 (48.67%) and 246 (13.59%) reported weight loss and gain plan. There was a significant gender difference in self-evaluation of weight (χ² = 113.461, P < 0.001). Among the students, 48.34% reported consumption of soft drinks once or more during previous 7 days and 74.97% reported only one or less than one day with the cumulated physical exercise time of at least 60 minutes for past 7 days.

  Conclusion  Most of high school students have no correct self-evaluation of weight and the majority of the students have their body weight overestimated and the bias in self-evaluation of weight differs by gender among the students. The study results also indicate that unhealthy eating behaviors of the students needs to be intervened.