Two decades of nutrition assessment in the eastern Mediterranean region: scope, methodologies and dissemination.

Different nutritional disorders prevail at different stages in the life cycle, e.g. growth retardation in the fetus, protein energy deficiency in children, noncommunicable conditions in adults. The scope of nutrition assessment has changed over the past 2 decades. The focus shifted from pregnant and lactating mothers and children, through functional consequences of malnutrition to deficiency disorders. Now the focus is on obesity. Clinical methods of assessment (usually indicators of late-stage malnutrition) have become less important recently although clinical indicators of iodine deficiency and vitamin A deficiency are still useful. The key method now is anthropomorphic measurement, such as weight-for-age or body mass index. All the countries of the Region have nutrition education programmes for dissemination of information and most have drawn up national dietary guidelines applying the strategies that were developed after the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition.