Childhood obesity is emerging as a major health problem in India, especially in children from urban higher socio-economic areas; for example, about 30% of children were overweight in an affluent Delhi school (Kapil, 2002). Body composition analysis serves an important measure for evaluating and monitoring nutritional status and health since it is not clear if overweight is associated with increased body fat specifically and if so, what distribution it has. The ability to obtain simple but acceptable assessments of body fat is therefore of value for monitoring growth and development in health and can be extended from communities to individuals to monitor the response to interventions, especially in children. Thus, the identification of appropriate and accurate methods of body composition assessment will provide information that can be compared with other risk profile data such as metabolic, fitness and fat distribution variables. There is also an increasing interest in how obesity influences the regional distribution of gross body components, particularly fat mass (FM) and fat free mass (FFM).
The aim of the present study is to look for associations of accurately measured body fat with risk factors for chronic disease in urban Indian children aged 6-15 years. The present study plans to precisely measure the body fat of urban Indian children nested within a larger epidemiological investigation and look for associations of the body fat with risk factors for chronic disease. It will also produce what we believe will be valuable reference data for the hydration factor of the FFM.