Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: Thirty-seven-year-old John V.G.A. Durnin in 1960 published his first study in a series that fifteen years later was to culminate in the most cited British Journal of Nutrition (BJN) paper in its 75-year history (Fig. 1) (1,2) .Along with A. Taylor, Durnin critically examined the replicability of the underwater weighing body composition method in a meticulous study of ten men (1) .The authors found that the error of a single measurement in 90 % of participants was about 0•004 density units, a level they judged to 'be of a satisfactory degree of accuracy' when estimating body fat.Interest in the underwater weighing method for estimating body fat was increasing in the 1950s, prior to Durnin and Taylor's publication, following the technique's introduction by Albert R. Behnke in 1942 (3) .Behnke recognised that a person's body density, measured by the underwater weighing method, reflects their level of adiposity.The underwater weighing method was placed on a solid footing in 1953 by Ancel Keys and Josef Brozek who proposed a series of initial body density equations that solved for two components of body mass: fat mass and fat-free mass (FFM) (4) .Just a few years later, in 1956, William E. Siri published an improved and simplified set of equations for deriving fat mass and FFM from measured body density that are still used today, almost seven decades later (5) .Durnin's evaluation of the underwater weighing method was motivated by these early studies that provided a means by which estimates of energy expenditure could be referenced to metabolically active components such as FFM rather than to body weight (6) .Durnin and his colleagues recognised, however, that weighing people under water was impractical in clinical and field settings.As an alternative, they turned to another, more feasible approach, skinfold anthropometry.First introduced in 1921 by the Czech anthropologist Jindrich Matiegka (7) , publications related to skinfold anthropometry and body composition rapidly expanded in the 1950s.In an early study typical of this era, D.A.W. Edwards in 1950 reported a close quadratic relationship between skinfolds measured at fifty-three sites in young women and body weight (8) .
Source: British Journal Of Nutrition
Authors: Steven B. Heymsfield, Boyd J. G. Strauss
Language: English
Subfield: Physiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4206636997