Food Consumption and Nutritional Intake in Rural India: Emerging Trends and Patterns

Background/Objectives: This paper is concerned with the analysis of food consumption and nutritional intake in major states of India during 1993-94 to 2011-12. As the rural poor are more vulnerable than any stratum of population, their issues of food and nutrition security have been placed one in the policy agenda.

Methods/Statistical Analysis: The present study is based upon the collection of secondary data. The secondary data will be gleaned from the reports on consumer expenditure by NSSO. The statistical tools like compound annual growth rate, linear extrapolation method and simple average, etc. will be used for analytical purposes.

Findings: The state-wise analysis corroborates that Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal lag behind in terms of income growth which can be substantiated by their higher expenditure on food. Though the share of high value commodities has increased, its rate of increase was not sufficient to surrogate for the decline in cereal consumption. Our results do not support the debasement of calorie requirements particularly in rural areas.

Application: An understanding of how many numbers or percentages of population are nutritionally deprived will ignite further studies in the area.