The health of an individual or group that is caused by diet
Nutritional Status may Show malnutrition of under or over nutritioncuased
by
Excess or deficiency of : energy, vitamins, minerals, protein or fat (rare)
Or it may be influenced by other conditions such as :
Diabetes
Alcoholism
Pregnancy
Measurement of Nutritional Status
Examining Individuals
Clinical examination
General appearance
Skin
hair
eyes
tongue
Laboratory test
Blood
Iron
Lipids
Vitamins
Tissue
better reservoir of nutrient stores
Hair
long term accumulation of minerals
Anthropometric measurements
Measuring Children
weight-for-age
length-for-age
` past under nutrition
weight-for-length
from current under nutrition or wasting
Measuring Adults
Age, weight, height and sex
Body mass index or BMI
Body Fat
Skin fold thickness
electrical impedance
body density
Measuring Food intake
Collecting Data
Diet analyis involves colecting data regarding all food consumed in a stipulated
periaod The problems involve collecting data on days that give good representation
of the usual food intake.
Daily Diet Recall
It is usual to use two days, one from a week day and one from a week end
because of the different diets often consumed on work days and leisure
days.
Problems include clients providing incorrect informatiuon due to:
dificulties in estimating quantities of servings
difficlties in estimating plate residues and left overs
forgeting to record snacks, confectionary and beverages
trying to say what they think the analyser would like to see.
Interview Methods
Some of the above problems can be address by asking clients what they ate
the day or week before.
Clients may still give answers they wish they ate rather than admit what
they reall ate
Household food expenditure
Can be a good record but does not include snack away from home.
These days people are eating on average up to 50 percent away from home.
Analysis of Data
To analyse the data can be very time consuming. It involves calculating
the content of each nutrient in each ingeadiet of each meal.
These days there are several computer programs that will analyse the data
for you.
Some are available on CD such as Food Works from Xyris
Software
Ther are free web bases diet analyser available uch as :
The proportion of the population that has the condition at one specific
point in time.
Calculate by dividing:
Number of individuals having one
Of the nutritional status conditions
byNumber of individuals in the Population measured
Using Samples
Types of Samples
Area samples
Simple random sample
Stratified sample
Systematic sample
Cluster sample
Representative sample
Collecting samples
Free living subjects
visiting subjects
street interview
phone interview
volunteers
Captive subjects
patients
inmates
The End
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