Few investigations have evaluated the validity of current body composition technology among racially and ethnically diverse populations. This study assessed the validity of common body composition methods in a multi-ethnic sample stratified by race and ethnicity. One hundred and ten individuals (55 % female, age: 26·5 (sd 6·9) years) identifying as Asian, African American/Black, Caucasian/White, Hispanic, Multi-racial and Native American were enrolled. Seven body composition models (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), air displacement plethysmography (ADP), two bioelectrical impedance devices (BIS, IB) and three multi-compartment models) were evaluated against a four-compartment criterion model by assessing total error (TE) and standard error of the estimate. For the total sample, measures of % fat and fat-free mass (FFM) from multi-compartment models were all excellent to ideal (% fat: TE = 0·94–2·37 %; FFM: TE = 0·72–1·78 kg) compared with the criterion. % fat measures were very good to excellent for DXA, ADP and IB (TE = 2·52–2·89 %) and fairly good for BIS (TE = 4·12 %). For FFM, single device estimates were good (BIS; TE = 3·12 kg) to ideal (DXA, ADP, IB; TE = 1·21–2·15 kg). Results did not vary meaningfully between each race and ethnicity, except BIS was not valid for African American/Black, Caucasian/White and Multi-racial participants for % fat (TE = 4·3–4·9 %). The multi-compartment models evaluated can be utilised in a multi-ethnic sample and in each individual race and ethnicity to obtain highly valid results for % fat and FFM. Estimates from DXA, ADP and IB were also valid. The BIS may demonstrate greater TE for all racial and ethnic cohorts and results should be interpreted cautiously.

Understanding the effects of acute feeding on body composition and metabolic measures is essential to the translational component and practical application of measurement and clinical use. To investigate the influence of acute feeding on the validity of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), a four-compartment model (4C) and indirect calorimetry metabolic outcomes, thirty-nine healthy young adults (n 19 females; age: 21·8 (sd 3·1) years, weight; 71·5 (sd 10·0) kg) participated in a randomised cross-over study. Subjects were provided one of four randomised meals on separate occasions (high carbohydrate, high protein, ad libitum or fasted baseline) prior to body composition and metabolic assessments. Regardless of macronutrient content, acute feeding increased DXA percent body fat (%fat) for the total sample and females (average constant error (CE):–0·30 %; total error (TE): 2·34 %), although not significant (P = 0·062); the error in males was minimal (CE: 0·11 %; TE: 0·86 %). DXA fat mass (CE: 0·26 kg; TE: 0·75 kg) and lean mass (LM) (CE: 0·83 kg; TE: 1·23 kg) were not altered beyond measurement error for the total sample. 4C %fat was significantly impacted from all acute feedings (avg CE: 0·46 %; TE: 3·7 %). 4C fat mass (CE: 0·71 kg; TE: 3·38 kg) and fat-free mass (CE: 0·55 kg; TE: 3·05 kg) exceeded measurement error for the total sample. RMR was increased for each feeding condition (TE: 1666·9 kJ/d; 398 kcal/d). Standard pre-testing fasting guidelines may be important when evaluating DXA and 4C %fat, whereas additional DXA variables (fat mass and LM) may not be significantly impacted by an acute meal. Measuring body composition via DXA under less stringent pre-testing guidelines may be valid and increase feasibility of testing in clinical settings.

This article uses ethnographic material from the Fuyuge of highland Papua and other Melanesian peoples critically to examine the attribution of modernity to Melanesia. Of related concern to this critical focus is that of periodisation, and the periodisation of modernity in Melanesia. Each ethnographic instance that is drawn upon is situated further in the historical past. The Melanesian past is used in this manner in order to address two questions: is it possible to periodise modernity in the Melanesia context; and, if so, when was modernity in Melanesia? The answers to both these considerations suggest that modernity cannot be likened to mass consumption or the individual, theoretical assumptions prevalent in current depictions of modernity in Melanesia. Rather, modernity is a temporal predicament connected to formations of political (state) power and its agendas of local intervention.

In an intriguing essay on colonialism in India, Appadurai (1993:316) draws attention to the importance of “number in the colonial imagination.” He argues that previous work on the colonial history of India has focused on modes of bureaucratic classification but has paid less attention to issues “of numbers, measurement, and of quantification in this enterprise” (Appadurai 1993:316). His argument suggests that the capacity to count, whether bodies or resources, was intrinsically connected with particular classificatory schemes such as castes or races. In their related ways each engendered an “illusion of bureaucratic control and a key to a colonial imaginaire in which countable abstractions . . . at every imaginable level and for every conceivable purpose, created sense of a controllable indigenous reality” (Appadurai 1993:317; cf. Anderson 1991:163–78; Gellner 1983:139–40; Kula 1986:120–22). Together these colonial procedures “had the effect of redirecting important indigenous practices in new directions” (Appadurai 1993:316). Subsequent (often violent) events in Indian colonial and postcolonial history, Appadurai argues, attest to this illusion, and the disjunction between the imagination of the governed and the governing.