This is a comprehensive text on the methods - dietary, anthropometric, laboratory and clinical - of assessing the nutritional status of populations and of individuals in the hospital or the community. The second edition incorporates recent data from national nutritional surveys in the US and Europe; the flood of new information about iron, vitamin A and iodine; the role of folate in preventing neural tube defects; the use of HPLC techniques and enzyme assays;improvements in data handling; and many other developments since 1990.