WASHINGTON, D.C. – Is First Lady Michelle Obama making kids fatter? Some experts believe she might be.

A recent study by the Institute of Psychology at Liverpool University presents evidence that people who are obese often eat more when they’re informed of that fact, creating a cycle of eating and weight gain that’s helping to fuel an obesity epidemic, especially among youth, Raw Story reports.

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In essence, the stigma associated with being fat stresses people out so they eat, and eat.

“There is quite a substantial body of research showing it is not really very much fun being an overweight person in this climate,” Liverpool University researcher Eric Robinson told The Guardian. “It is a stigmatized condition. Realizing you are an overweight individual is in itself likely to be quite stressful and make making healthy choices in your lifestyle more difficult.

“It is a tricky finding for public health intervention work. You would hope that making a person aware they are overweight would result in them being more likely to change and lose some weight.”

The researchers reviewed 14,000 adults in the United States and the United Kingdom through three studies: the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the UK National Child Development Study, and Midlife in the United States. They looked at participants’ perceptions of their weight as they reached adolescence, then tracked them over a 7- to 22-year time frame.

“Overall, researchers found ‘consistent’ evidence that perceptions of being overweight, regardless of if they were true or not, meant that people would eat more,” Raw Story reports. “The team’s third study then found that this most frequently occurs when people are trying to comfort themselves; eating is the way they relieve stress.”

“People with a heavier body weight have body image challenges,” Robinson said. “That’s not surprising given the way we talk about weight and fat and obesity as a society. But the way we talk about body weight and the way we portray overweight and obesity in society is something we can think about and reconsider. There are ways of talking about it and encouraging people to make healthy changes to their lifestyle that don’t portray adiposity as a terribly deviant thing.”

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“In other words, anti-obesity campaigns, like the Let’s Move! Program spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama, can do more harm than good,” The Week reports.

“It certainly goes against all the common wisdom that you must find all the overweight people and tell them,” said Traci Mann, longtime obesity researcher at the University of Minnesota. “This suggests that is not a good strategy.”

Angelia Sutin, an assistant professor at Florida State University College of Medicine, told The Guardian scientists have known for a while now that weight conscious children tend to gain more weight, but the recent research illustrates how profound the effect can be.

“This paper shows this is a life course phenomenon that has consequences across the life span,” she said. “The effect are there over a very long period of time.”

“We should not be classifying people as overweight and giving them a label that has stigma attached to it, but enabling people to make healthier choices,” she said.

Several child nutrition experts have criticized Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity campaign, and the federal restrictions on school food attached to it, for preventing children from making informed decisions about their diet, and instead imposing a food regimen the government deems appropriate.