Energy balance
Doubly labeled water (DLW) is the criterion gold standard for assessing total energy expenditure (TEE) in free-living individuals, but it does not provide information on activity type, intensity, or duration.
If you need to know exactly how much total energy a person burns in their daily life, the Doubly Labeled Water technique is the most accurate method available. However, it is expensive and requires collecting urine samples for 7-14 days, so it is mostly used in research rather than clinical practice. For most people, other objective measures like accelerometers are more practical, even if less precise for total energy.
The criterion or 'gold standard' approach to assess total energy expenditure (TEE) in a free-living context is the doubly labeled water (DLW) technique... Despite being the criterion method for the assessment of TEE, the DLW technique does not provide specific information regarding daily PA (11). In short, the technique provides an accurate measure of TEE over a chosen number of days or weeks from which average daily EE can be calculated, but does not quantify activity type, intensity, or duration accounting for this EE (10).
Why this rating
The paper explicitly labels DLW as the 'criterion' or 'gold standard' and cites multiple validations.
Source
Assessment of Physical Activity and Energy Expenditure: An Overview of Objective Measures
Andrew P. Hills et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2014
DOI 10.3389/fnut.2014.00005
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