Physical measurement index is an important parameter to evaluate the nutritional status, which can reflect the short-term and long-term nutritional status of children, mainly including weight, height (length), head circumference, chest circumference, triceps skinfold thickness, upper arm circumference and so on. At present, height and weight measurement is widely used at home and abroad.
(1) Age-specific height (H/A): an indicator of long-term nutritional status, which is not sensitive enough in evaluating short-term nutrition. In recent years, with the improvement of living standards, the average height of children has been significantly improved. Using the original standard to evaluate the current growth and development of children may miss malnourished children of the same sex, age and weight, but their height is obviously higher than the normal standard.
(2) Age-specific weight (W/A): an indicator reflecting the short-term or long-term nutritional status, which is often used to evaluate the nutritional status of children. It is often used as a basis for judging the prevalence of malnutrition in the world, but its significance in evaluating overweight and obesity is not as good as height-specific weight (W/H) or body mass index.
(3)W/H: It is one of the most commonly used indicators to judge children's emaciation and overweight and obesity. Its advantage is that it does not depend on age. In a single measurement, W/H is more meaningful than W/A, which can judge emaciation, growth retardation or both.
(4) Body mass index: Like W/H, height and weight are used to evaluate children's nutritional status. Its practical significance is that the weight per unit area is better than W/H in evaluating the overweight and obesity of adolescents, and it can be used as a nutritional monitoring index at all stages of growth and development.