| Little is known about the energy expenditure (EE) of children doing subsistence labor tasks. While the literature does provide qualitative information, it lacks quantitative data. Even though this was attributed to a lack of interest in children performing subsistence labor activities 20 years ago (Bradley, 1993), the real reason rests more on the fact that techniques to assess EE are invasive and this discourages many from studying children. The equipment to measure EE has not been designed for children's use and is, therefore, inappropriately sized for children. More recently, new techniques that could be used on children have been proposed, but they either are inaccurate, costly, invasive, or complicated. The resultant methodological and informational lacunae call for the development of new methods that will facilitate assessment of EE in children.; My doctoral dissertation aimed, therefore, to establish an affordable, simple, and non-invasive method to allow the routine estimation of energy expenditure (EE) in normal children performing various activities. I chose pre-pubescent children (7 to 10 years old) who were living at sea-level in a temperate climate so that I could develop a simple model to test. This was a better first step than confronting the difficulties arising from the pubertal changes of older children or from extreme environments. The project focused on regression modeling as a means to predict oxygen consumption (VO2 )---a proxy of energy expenditure---from heart rate (HR) and several other variables that adjusted for inter-individual variability in body composition.; The principal impact of my research was the expansion of knowledge about a particularly under-represented group---children. Ultimately, this method could serve as a baseline for developing a similar approach for other populations where simple, non-invasive methods for estimating EE are imperative. Application of the method will have broad impact across diverse fields, e.g., physiology, human biology, by allowing a better understanding of children's energetic issues, growth, development, and related biocultural parameters to be obtained. |
