Why calorie based norm is not adequate to identify the poor?

Changing preference for higher quality food, including horticulture products and milk, in all sections of society has rendered the present method of estimating poverty based on calorie intake irrelevant and may lead to misleading conclusions.

Calorie intake figures would suggest that incidence of poverty was less in Orissa than in rural Kerala and urban Haryana, said Chief Statistician of India Pronab Sen in an interactive meeting with the Forum of Financial Writers on "Impact of growth on poverty

• the Indian experience" here today.