Nutrition is essential for growth and development, health and wellbeing. Eating a healthy diet contributes to preventing future illness and improving quality and length of life. Your nutritional status is the state of your health as determined by what you eat. There are several ways of assessing nutritional status, including anthropometric (i.e. physical body measurement), food intake and biochemical measurement.
Your body mass index (BMI) is a good indicator of your nutritional status. It takes into account your weight and height, and correlates well with total body fat expressed as a percentage of body weight. The correlation depends on age, with the highest correlation seen in ages 26–55 years and the lowest in the young and the elderly. If you take your weight in kilograms and divide it by your height in metres squared, the figure you obtain is your BMI.
