**1. Introduction**

Many studies have concluded that physical inactivity is a primary cause of most chronic diseases [1–3]. The benefits of physical activity for maintaining health have been well documented, especially in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases such as certain cancers, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases [4,5]. This is especially important in the police force, as law enforcement officers are often required to adapt quickly from sedentary, passive functions to hostile environments where maximum body effort is needed [6]. In this context, accurate measurement of energy expenditure is essential for both epidemiological studies and assessment of human nutritional needs [7,8].

Total energy expenditure is the energy required by the body during a 24-h period and is determined by the sum of three components: basal energy expenditure, diet-induced thermogenesis, and physical activity [9]. Determination of energy expenditure is important to adjust the nutritional habits of individual people and must take into account the energy requirements for physical activity and specific health conditions. To date, no research has

**Citation:** Bertrandt, J.; Anyzewska, ˙ A.; Łakomy, R.; Lepionka, T.; Szarska, E.; Tomczak, A.; Ga ´zdzi ´nska, A.; Bertrandt-Tomaszewska, K.; Kłos, K.; Maculewicz, E. Assessment of Energy Expenditure of Police Officers Trained in Polish Police Schools and Police Training Centers. *IJERPH* **2022**, *19*, 6828. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph19116828

Academic Editor: José Carmelo Adsuar Sala

Received: 11 April 2022 Accepted: 1 June 2022 Published: 2 June 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

been conducted in Poland on the energy burden associated with the service and training of officers studying at police schools and trained at police training centers. In the Polish uniformed services, such research was conducted only among students of various types of military schools and fire schools. These studies indicate that students at military universities were burdened with an energy expenditure of 3339 to 4121 kcal/d, while students at fire schools—from 3735 to 4745 kcal/d [10–13]. According to the workload classification by Lehman, they performed medium to very heavy work [14].

The issues related to energy expenditure, the energy value of food, and, consequently, the systemic energy balance are of particular importance in the uniformed services. Knowledge of the physical burden connected with the specificity of the service performed should be an indispensable element of food planning, which must cover the energy needs of the body and provide all necessary nutrients in the right amounts and proportions. The police are a uniformed and armed formation serving the public and intended to protect human security and to maintain public safety and order. Knowledge of the energy expenditure related to the training of police officers allows for assessment of the severity of work performed and provides a possibility to quantify it and forms the basis for establishing nutrition standards. The heaviness of work, the measure of which is the value of energy expenditure, is an indispensable element of an assessment of physical load in accordance with psychophysical capabilities, while the physical load is a relation between the requirements of work based on physical effort and the capabilities of the body.

The aim of this study was to determine the energy expenditure of students at police schools and police training centers in relation to the specificity and nature of the training to assess degree of intensity of their work.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**
