ICMR Advanced Centre for Nutrition Research

Policy Implications of Changing Energy Requirement of Indians

The ICMR has reconstituted its Expert Committee on RDA which will take into account changing lifestyles and energy requirements of Indians and come up with appropriate recommendations regarding the dietary intake of Indians. NFI would participate in this exercise reviewing the available information from research studies to define the energy requirements of healthy adult Indian men and women, adolescents, children and the elderly in their current lifestyles.

RDA forms the basis of many policies and programmes. For instance, the poverty line in India has so far been defined on the basis of cost of basket of food stuffs which will provide 2,200 calories to the urban and 2,400 calories to the rural population. The President of NFI is a member of the newly constituted Committee to define poverty line and will contribute to evaluation of policies in this critical area.

NFI would work out policy implications of the redefined RDA for other sectors concerned including agriculture, PDS, poverty alleviation, nutrition and health and sensitise the policy makers to the new paradigm so that they all move synchronously to achieve nutrition security for all within the stipulated time frame.

Criteria for Defining Overnutrition in the Indian Context

There are substantial differences in the anthropometric indices as well as prevalence of communicable and non-communicable diseases between countries and between communities in the same country. As both Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED) and obesity are associated with adverse health consequences, it has been suggested that each country should develop its own norms for BMI and cut-off points indicative of various degrees of undernutrition and overnutrition based on their own data on health problems in persons with varying BMI levels. NFI will review the association between various anthropometric indices including body mass index, which are currently in use for defining under- and over-nutrition and health problems in India. This exercise will help in building up a database on which rational decisions can be made on appropriate cut-off points in each of these indices which could be used to screen the population and identify those at higher risk of developing health problems.