The distribution of the child’s BMI percentiles and the parental perception of the child’s current
weight status across asthma-food allergy status categories was examined. Figure 1 shows the
proportion of overweight/obese children according to BMI percentiles and the parental perception of
their child’s current weight status within each asthma-food allergy category. Except for children with
both asthma and food allergy, the prevalence of obesity, when objectively measured using BMI
percentiles, was consistently higher than parental perception. Further, a higher proportion of
overweight/obese children among children with asthma only compared to children with food allergy
only was observed irrespective of the obesity measure (23.3% vs. 18.4% according to measured BMI
percentiles and 3.3% vs. 2.6% according to parental perception).