Dieting and weight worries on rise in teens

Significantly higher numbers of Generation Z boys and girls in the UK are dieting to lose weight, and are likely to overestimate their own weight, finds a new UCL-led study. The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics , found that girls who are trying to lose weight are also more likely to experience depressive symptoms than in previous years. In 2015, 42% of 14-year-old girls and boys said they currently were trying to lose weight, compared to 30% in 2005. Lead author Dr Francesca Solmi (UCL Psychiatry) said: "Our findings show how the way we talk about weight, health and appearance can have profound impacts on young people's mental health, and efforts to tackle rising obesity rates may have unintended consequences. "An increase in dieting among young people is concerning because experimental studies have found that dieting is generally ineffective in the long term at reducing body weight in adolescents, but can instead have greater impacts on mental health. We know, for instance, that dieting is a strong risk factor in the development of eating disorders." The research team reviewed data from 22,503 adolescents in the UK, in three different decades, who are part of different cohort studies: the British Cohort Study (of people born in 1970; data was collected in 1986), the Children of the 90s study (born 1991-92, data collected in 2005), and Millennium Cohort Study (born 2000-02, data collected in 2015).