In the Pursuit of an Appropriate Calorie Intake Norm for Indian States

Abstract

AbstractA puzzling aspect of India's nutrition story is that deficiencies in calorie intake and anthropometric health outcomes across states are not significantly correlated. One potential explanation is inaccurate accounting of the calorie needs of people living in different states of India. There are significant variations in the disease environments, health infrastructure, and mechanization of economies across states which necessitate different levels of calorie consumption. Using consumption survey data collected by the National Sample Survey Office in 2011–2012, and utilizing multilevel models, we show that these factors are important determinants of calorie intakes across states. Then we calculate state-adjusted calorie norm for Indian states and use them to recalibrate their prevalence of undernourishment (PoU). In addition, we show that the correlations between calorie intakes, determined by the state-adjusted calorie norms and anthropometric health outcomes, are strong and significant. Our findings suggest that for a diverse country like India, a uniform national calorie intake norm is inappropriate, leading to inaccurate estimates of calorie intake deficiencies across states.