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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.

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Calorie based norm can and should not be taken as a base for poverty line. In  a society only food doesn't mean eveything. Education, Social Rights, health care facilities etc. should be also taken into consideration. Moreover such poverty line does not help to distinguish between poor and very poor. 

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Because through calorie only we find out which person is healthy or unhealthy to finding such type of ratio we have to identify it by income, how much they expend on thier basic requriements , food etc .
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Because this mechanism takes into account expenditure on food and fuel select items as proxy for income only and their other factors like basic education,health care,drinking water and sanitation associated with poverty .these factors are not considered on calorie based norm
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