What Is Nutritional Assessment, Types And More

What Is Nutritional Assessment?

According to British Dietetics Association (BDA), Nutritional assessment is the systematic process carried out by collecting information and interpreting the information, in order to make decision about the nature and cause of nutrition related health problems on people or individual. It is the interpretation of the results from anthropometric, biochemical, clinical and dietary assessment of an individual or group of people. In other words nutritional assessment means the collection of data of individual or groups of people and interpret the data to know their nutritional status for intervention using foods to meet up their recommended intake. Therefore one can make an information decision on what an individual or group of people needs to eat in order to archive their goals of good health and maintaining it. 

Why Is Nutritional Assessment Very Important?

• Nutritional assessment will help to determine what to eat and what to avoid if one wants to live a healthy life, just like the popularly saying of food is health, eat health and stay fit, you are what you eat.

• Nutritional assessment provides the vital information about whether certain foods should be eating or not and the reasons for that.

• Nutritional assessment carrying out regularly will help an individual to know the nutritional status he/she belongs to, and its the only way to ensure you're getting enough nutrients from your daily meals.

• Nutritional assessment helps on how to plan and modify meals in in order to prevent certain deficiency disease.

• Nutritional assessment helps one to plan and produce foods to meet up the daily requirement, which help to avoid unnecessary snacking and convenience food.

• It help people to make informed decisions about changes diets.

• It help people to understand their own dietary intake and compare it to the recommended daily allowance for nutrients (macro and micro).

• Regular, nutritional assessment makes a person or groups of people to know and identify.

How Often Should One Assess His/her Nutritional Status?

Nutritional assessment should be carried out at least every 6 months or even once a year, but this can be done or performed more often, depending on individuals health status. Example some one who is on weight loss, weight gain, diabetes and high blood pressure diet will always check their nutritional status regularly to archive their goals, while an healthy individual will focus on keeping fit and be more healthy.

What Are The Important Of Nutritional Assessment?

• It evaluate the overall health being and nutritional status of a person.

• It helps and allows experts (Nutritionist and Dietitians) to evaluate the effectiveness of prescribed and recommended treatment.

• It promotes healthy lifestyle.

• It is an effective way to monitor the progress of people dietary intake to the target goals to archive.

• It encourages people to compliance with recommendations for treatment and management. 

What Are The Different Types Of Nutritional Assessment?

1. Anthropometric                         Assessment  =A.
2. Biochemical                              Assessment = B.
3. Clinical                                     Assessment = C.
4. Dietary                                     Assessment = D.

What Is Anthropometric Assessment?

Anthropometric: This type of assessment is an innovative and quantitative, qualitative measurement of the body to give data that provide the results of the nutritional status of people, both children and grown ups one, which includes adults and elderly. Anthropometric involves the measurement of the size, weight, shape and proportions of the body, they are most commonly used methods of assessments in the pediatric population to evaluate the general health status of children, nutritional adequacy, growth and development of the children. Weighing involves knowing the weight of the individual if its improving or not, height will help to know if the individual especially children are growing tall or not. Also anthropometric is used to calculate the relationships between the weight and the height called BMI (body mass index) with the formula weight/height = wt/ht x ht.

This will detect where the person fall within the range.

What Are The Anthropometric Measurement?

• Body mass index (BMI).

• Height.

• Weight.

• Waist circumference.

• Skinfold Thickness.

• Visceral fat.

• MUAC (mild upper arm circumference).

• Blood pressure, bone mineral density.

• Fat-free mass, heart rate.

• Muscle mass.

What Are The Advantages Of Anthropometric Assessment?

• It can be applied to large sample size and data will be collected quickly.

• It is simple, safe, and non-invasive procedures. 

• It can be done without any specialized training by health pare providers.

• It's objective with high sensitivity and specificity.

• Most of the equipment used are locally available.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Anthropometric Assessment?

• An anthropometric assessment covers limited nutritional diagnosis.
• This method of assessment cannot be used to identify protein and micro nutrients or to use to detect small disturbances in nutritional status.

What Is Biochemical Assessment?

Biochemical Assessment is the method of assessment that involves checking the level of nutrients in a person fluid, such as blood, urine, stool and even saliva, which usually takes place through a lab test, this involves a trained medical practitioner, such as a lab scientists that involves in taking blood samples to measure the level of glucose, nitrogen, sodium, blood and many nutrients in the blood. The physician will screen the following parameters, such as albumin hemoglobin, urea, creatine, and point deficiencies.

What Are The Advantages Of Biochemical Assessment?

• Biochemical Assessment confine the clinical diagnosis of nutritional status and risk or diseases.
• They easily identify malnutrition or any nutritional deficiencies in the body.
• The results detected are always correct according to the person's body.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Biochemical Assessment?

• It takes time (time consuming).
• The test must be carried out on multiple bases by the health practitioners for proper diagnosis.
• The equipment used are expensive and not easily available.

What Is Clinical Assessment? 

This is the simplest, cheapest and the most practical method of assessing the nutritional status and wellbeing of a patient. Clinical methods of assessing a patient is by physical examining by checking specific part or area of the body to identify or discover any signs or symptoms of a deficiencies. It also involved asking a patient questions such as whether, they have any symptoms that might suggest nutrient deficiencies.

What Are The Advantages Of Clinical Assessment?

• It is easy to diagnosed a deficiency disease.
• It helps the health personnel (dietitians) to dictate changes in the body metabolism by mare looking at the features of patients.
• It doesn't need the use of equipment to detect the deficiency disease, example: an obese patients can be detected just by viewing at the structures, a child suffering from rickets can be detected by looking at legs.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Clinical Assessment?

• It only provides limited data on foods composition.
• It is sometimes expensive, especially if medical equipment is used.

What Is Dietary Nutritional Assessment?

This is the process of collecting information through history of what a person eats and drink over certain period of time. It involves keeping records of foods and drinks in order to calculate their nutrient intake if it meets up with the recommended intake. It helps the dietitian to know the cause of the disease through either excess intake or low intake of certain nutrient or foods. The energy, macro nutrients, and micro nutrients will be analysed by the medical practitioner (dietitian), including other dietary constituents, such as fiber and ash using foo foo h composition table and food exchange list. The data and results will help to change the patient diet and lifestyle and improve the overall well-being of the patient.

What Are The Methods Used For Dietary Assessment?

• Diet record.
• 24 hour recall.
• Food frequency questionnaire.

What Are The Advantages Of Dietary Assessment?

• The results are almost largely accurate due to the description of foods which are given in detail.
• It provides fully all information concerning the patient dietary food intake, and patterns of eating.
• It provides information on the potion size of the food eaten by the person.

What Are The Disadvantages Dietary Assessment?

• It is from inadequate response especially if food frequency questionnaire is used to gather data.
• It relies on accurate recall of dietary intake over a very long period of time before getting results. Which takes time before diagnosing the problems.

Thank you very much 

Dietitians +2348137323444