Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Many methods about the determination of energy consumption in human have limitations and are vulnerably affected by uncertainty factors, such as questionnaire investigation methods. Therefore, the energy metabolism laboratory acts as a “golden standard” for determining human energy consumption in the world recently.
OBJECTIVE: To introduce the construction of energy metabolism laboratory, scaling methods and research progresses by using energy metabolism at abroad.
METHODS: PubMed database was retrieved online by the first author for the papers concerning construction and application of the energy metabolism laboratory from 1900 to 2010. The key words for retrieve were “metabolic chamber, energy consumption” in English. Repetitive content was excluded, and totally 41 papers were included.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: At present, there are several methods for determining energy consumption in human, such as doubly labeled water, portable gas analyzer and accelerometer methods. As the “golden standard” of the determination of human energy consumption, energy metabolism laboratory can evaluate physical activity rapidly and correctly. This article has related the construction of energy metabolism laboratory and the researches applied by energy metabolism laboratory, including diet, sport, racial energy metabolism, female energy metabolism, non-manual activity and energy consumption at low temperature.