Resumen: The ability to accurately assess nutritional status has become critically important in recent decades, as knowledge of and interest in the relationships between diet and health have increased. Nutrition researchers must be able to measure food and nutrient intake with accuracy and precision before drawing conclusions about how health and risk of disease are influenced by what we eat. Periodic monitoring of a nation’s health and nutritional status is necessary to develop effective programs targeting specific health and nutrition concerns, such as high blood cholesterol levels, diabetes, food insecurity and hunger, maternal and infant malnutrition, and overweight. Awareness of these health and nutrition concerns has led the government to establish such programs as the National Cholesterol Education Program; the National Diabetes Education Program; the Food Stamp Program; the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children; and Sisters Together: Move more, eat better. Periodic nutritional and health monitoring provides empirical data to determine the cost-effectiveness of such programs in attempts to preserve effective ones from changing political agendas and governmental budgetary priorities. Dietitians and physicians rely on objective measures on nutritional support to a critically ill patient and to determine that patient’s responsiveness to treatment. The public is increasingly interested in the health implications of taking nutritional supplements and of knowing how much of which supplements can actually improve health and prevent disease.

Incluye bibliografía

Índice: p. 572-580