The double malnutritional burden and regional disparities in Taiwan elementary school children: survey database and reference values.

This special issue on the Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan Elementary School Children carried out during 2001-2002 (NAHSIT Children 2001-2002) portrays the current dilemma of the so-called "double nutritional burden" in Taiwanese children with papers addressing topics on the dietary characteristics, nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, usage of nutritional supplements, nutritional biochemistry, and various aspects of diet, nutrition, behavior, health and wellbeing in children. The emergence of a double health burden in Taiwanese children is more prevalent in the underprivileged and less urbanized communities than in metropolitan cities. The NAHSIT Children 2001-2002 survey provides age-, and gender- specific percentile values for anthropometric measurements, physiological variables like physical fitness, blood pressure and pulse, respiratory function and bone density; nutritional hematology and biochemistry. For international comparison, these reference data are tabulated in this report and the survey data are made available in the data archive system maintained by the Center for Survey Research, Academia Sinica.