ABSTRACT
The assessment of body composition is common in fields as diverse as medicine, anthropology, ergonomics, sport performance, and child growth. Some complexity arises with the term lipid in terms of assessing body composition, as there are many forms of lipid with varying densities in the human body. It should be clear that assessment of body composition is far from an exact science and all methods should be scrutinised for the validity of their underlying assumptions. It is convenient to separate assessment methods by the type of constituent they measure: chemical or anatomical. The traditional method of hydrodensitometry is no longer regarded as the 'gold standard' for determining percent body fat because of better appreciation of the frequent violation of one of its basic assumptions. Compared with hydrodensitometry, air displacement plethysmography offers a quicker assessment that is more convenient than underwater weighing and can be safely used in virtually any adult subject population.
