title: Public Report on Health: Development of a Nutritive Value Calculator for Indian Foods and Analysis of Food Logs and Nutrient Intake in six States.
abstract: The Public Report on Health (PRoH) was initiated in 2005 to understand public health issues for people from diverse backgrounds living in different region specific contexts. States were selected purposively to capture a diversity of situations from better-performing states and not-so-well performing states. Based on these considerations, six states - the better-performing states of Tamil Nadu (TN), Maharashtra (MH) and Himachal Pradesh (HP) and the not-so-well performing states of Madhya Pradesh (MP), Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Orissa (OR) - were selected. This is a report of a study using food diaries to assess food intakes in sample households from six states of India.
  
  
  METHODS
  Food diaries were maintained and all the raw food items that went into making the food in the household was measured using a measuring cup that converted volumes into dry weights for each item. The proportion consumed by individual adults was recorded. A nutrient calculator that computed the total nutrient in the food items consumed, using the 'Nutritive Value of Indian Foods by Gopalan et al., was developed to analyze the data and this is now been made available as freeware (http://bit.ly/ncalculator). The total nutrients consumed by the adults, men and women was calculated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Identifying details having been removed, the raw data is available, open access on the internet http://bit.ly/foodlogxls.The energy consumption in our study was 2379 kcal per capita per day. According to the Summary Report World Agriculture the per capita food consumption in 1997-99 was 2803 which is higher than that in the best state in India. The consumption for developing countries a decade ago was 2681 and in Sub-Saharan Africa it was 2195. Our data is compatible in 2005 with the South Asia consumption of 2403 Kcal per capita per day in 1997-99. For comparison, in industrialized countries it was 3380. In Tamil Nadu it was a mere 1817 kcal.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The nutrient consumption in this study suggests that food security in the villages studied is far from achieved. It is hoped that the new Food Security Ordinance will make a dent in the situation. The calculator for computing nutrients of foods consumed which we developed based on the ICMR defined nutrient values for Indian foods has been made available as freeware on the internet. This is with the hope that more such studies can be carried out at the household level.
authors.affiliation: Coordinator, PRoH Study, currently PhD Scholar at the International Institute of Social Studies , Den Haag, Erasmus University, Rotterdam.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sathyamala
authors.affiliation: Executive Director PRoH. Presently IGSSS , 28 Lodi Institutional Area, New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Nj
authors.initials: Nj
authors.lastname: Kurian
authors.affiliation: Director, Collaborative Research and Dissemination (CORD) , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Anuradha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: DE
authors.affiliation: Faculty, Council for Social Developent (CSD) , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Kb
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saxena
authors.affiliation: Faculty, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Ritu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Priya
authors.affiliation: Faculty, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru Univerisity , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Rama
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Baru
authors.affiliation: Faculty, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Ravi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.affiliation: Convenor, Swasthya Neeti Samvad , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Onkar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mittal
authors.affiliation: Director, Collaborative Research and Dissemination (CORD) , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Noronha
authors.affiliation: Director, Collaborative Research and Dissemination (CORD) , New Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Meera
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Samson
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics St Stephens Hospital Delhi , India .
authors.forename: Sneh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Khalsa
authors.affiliation: Solutions Architect, Gonzo Buzz , Singapore .
authors.forename: Ashish
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Puliyel
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics St Stephens Hospital Delhi, India .
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Puliyel
keywords: Dietary requirements; Food security