Nutritional Assessment

Key points

• • Nutritional assessment measures whether a person or a community is well nourished, using four kinds of information (remembered as ABCD).
• • Anthropometry is the measurement of the body: weight, height, and in children the mid-upper-arm circumference, compared against standard charts.
• • The body mass index (weight divided by height squared) is a common anthropometric measure used to classify underweight, normal weight and overweight in adults.
• • Biochemical tests measure nutrients or their effects in the blood and urine, such as haemoglobin for anaemia (with ferritin to confirm iron deficiency).
• • Clinical assessment looks for physical signs of deficiency, such as the eye changes of vitamin A lack or the skin changes of pellagra.
• • Dietary assessment records what a person actually eats, for example by a 24-hour recall or a food-frequency questionnaire.