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Latino children are disproportionately affected by obesity but are less likely than non-Latino children to receive obesity counseling. Although it is well known that derogatory weight terms should be avoided, it is not known which terms are the most motivating to diverse patient populations.
Over 500 parents who identified as Latino or Hispanic were recruited from a safety-net hospital's pediatric clinics and completed a survey asking whether they found a selection of weight descriptors desirable, motivating, or offensive (about half were in English, half in Spanish). The most desirable/motivating and least offensive English terms were “unhealthy weight” and “too much weight for his/her health;” the corresponding Spanish terms were “demasiad…