Evaluation of the General Nutritional Status by Using Anthropometric Measurement for Female Students Population in Algeria PDF

Keywords

female students, BMI, nutrition

Abstract

The anthropometric data collected in this study were used to determine general nutritional status for 362 female students population aged from 19 to 26 years, to test the statistical characteristics and correlations of various BMIs reported in the literature. BMI that is independent of stature (r=0) and still highly correlated to weight (r=0.96) was found in this study to be W/S2. This BMI was also highly correlated to measured and calculated estimates of body composition including arm muscle area, arm fat area (r=0.96) and arm circumference (r=0.81). When we used this BMI to evaluate the general nutritional status for this samples, we noticed that 12.43% suffered from undernutrition and 66.03% had normal weight, but with decreased arm muscle area, and 21.54% appeared increased in the weight. The chief reason of this is an unsaturated increase of arm far area in the body.