Upper arm anthropometric indicators of nutritional status.

The growth in arm muscle area and arm fat area of preschool children from rural Guatemala is compared to that of a standard from the U.S.A. It was found that although the Guatemalan children have reduced arm muscle and fat areas, the relative reduction in arm fat area was greater than in arm muscle area. Further, the upper arm cross-sectional area of Guatemalan children had proportionately more muscle than fat when compared to that of U.S.A. children. Lastly, for the same body weight, Guatemalan children had a similar arm muscle area but a clearly smaller arm fat area than North American children. It is concluded that these findings suggest that energy rather than protein is the main nutritional problem in these Guatemalan children.