ABSTRACT
The assessment of body composition is important as an indicator of the nutritional and/or healthy status of a subject (Deurenberg et al., 1994; Forbes, 1987; Lukaski, 1987). Depending on the subjects and the circumstances, different aspects of body composition can be assessed for which, generally, several methods are available. Although in recent years new information has been made available by the use of modern techniques such as neutron-activation and computer tomography-scanning, most of the generally used methods are still based on the results of the chemical and anthropological analysis of a few human cadavers (Widdowson et al., 1951; Clarys and Marfell-Jones, 1994). From these chemical and anthropological analyses, three basic methods have been derived which have been accepted as reference methods. These are the densitometric method, the dilution method for total body water, and the 40K method (Forbes, 1987). Each of these approaches has its own assumptions, which are in fact only valid for healthy adults at a group level and which are known to be invalid in many other groups of subjects (Slaughter et al., 1988; Deurenberg et al., 1989; 1994). From the reference method many “indirect” and “doubly indirect”, techniques were developed, such as hydrostatic weighing-HW (Siri et al., 1961), skinfold thickness measurements – SF (Durnin and Womersley, 1974; Parizkova, 1977) and bio-impedance analysis – BIA (Lukaski et al., 1985).
