Body Composition Assessment in Children & Adults
The best indicator of overall health
Body composition, or fat vs. fat-free (or lean) mass, reflects the results of a person’s physical activity and nutritional practices. Monitoring body weight alone can be very misleading, because a scale can't tell the difference between a pound of fat and a pound of muscle. Sedentary people sometimes gain fat and lose muscle without any noticeable change in their weight. Or, while on an exercise/weight training program a person may not experience a significant change in weight, yet their muscle mass is most likely increasing, while they are also probably losing body fat. A body composition analysis would reveal these important shifts in body composition that a scale cannot. And even though a certain amount of body fat is needed to insure good health, excess body fat has been found to dramatically increase the risk of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, just to name a few. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have now declared obesity an epidemic, with 66% of adult Americans either overweight or obese (having excess body fat). Even more alarming is the dramatic increase of obesity in children and adolescents, with 30% of young Americans under the age of 18 now classified as either overweight or obese.
Only by accurately assessing body composition will one know exactly what makes up their weight, enabling sensible decisions regarding nutrition and exercise programs to be made. It’s the single best way for a person to get the "whole picture" of what's really going on in their body.
Body composition measurement techniques can vary greatly, with many methods being too difficult, invasive, or inaccurate. For example, Skinfold Calipers and Bioelectric Impedance have error factors of up to +/-8%. This means that a skinfold or bioelectric impedance measurement of 22% body fat could actually be as low as 14% or as high as 30%. Inaccurate information like this can be downright dangerous if used for developing diet and/or training programs, so it’s important to use an accurate method when assessing body composition.
This is what makes the BOD POD so unique. Its Air Displacement Technology offers the unbeatable accuracy of a laboratory technique, along with the simplicity of a field technique, making it the only practical gold standard for measuring body composition.