[Assessment of nutritional status in pediatric ambulatory research]

Nutritional status, an important measure in health promotion and certain childhood and adolescent pathologies, includes anthropometric, diet and physical activity evaluation. Choosing the best assessment of nutritional status for your research must consider objectives of clinician, study design, number of subjects, frequency of measurement, and cost. The purpose of this paper is to present reliable and valid field techniques available for pediatric ambulatory clinical research. These techniques do not interfere with free living conditions and represent a good alternative compared to reference assessment. The techniques are compatible with the quality assurance and ethics in clinical and epidemiological research requirements.