Per capita versus adult-equivalent estimates of calorie availability in household budget surveys Estimativa domiciliar da disponibilidade calórica per capita versus adulto-equivalente em pesquisa de orçamento familiar

This study aims to estimate an adult-equivalent scale for calorie requirements and to determine the differences between adult-equivalent and per capita measurements of calorie availability in the Brazilian population. The study used data from the 2002-2003 Brazilian Household Budget Survey. The calorie requirement for a reference adult individual was based on the mean requirements for adult males and females (2,550kcal/day). The conversion factors were defined as the ratios between the calorie requirements for each age group and gender and that of the reference adult. The adult-equivalent calorie availability levels were higher than the per capita levels, with the largest differences in rural and low-income households. Differences in household calorie availability varied from 22kcal/day (households with adults and an adolescent) to 428kcal/day (households with elderly individuals), thus showing that per capital measurements can underestimate the real calorie availability, since they overlook differences in household composition. Food Consumption; Nutrition Surveys; Energy Requirement Introduction Household budget surveys have been used to measure household food availability based on food expenditures 1. Although they do not provide a direct measurement of individual food consumption, unlike dietary surveys, they do allow capturing wide variability in food consumption for a significant portion of the population, and at a relatively low cost, besides allowing the disaggregation of information according to socioeconomic strata and geographic regions 2. In addition, the periodic implementation of household budget surveys allows identifying trends in the population’s eating patterns over time 3. Studies that assess food consumption based on household food availability generally overlook the impact of family composition on this information, basing their analyses on per capita estimates. Such a strategy leads to a gap between these estimates and real family food consumption, since they fail to consider the presence of family members with distinct energy needs, like children 4. Thus, adult-equivalent scales are useful tools for narrowing the difference between such estimates and real food consumption and allowing the comparison of data for families with different compositions. This tool allows identifying the contribution of various family members to the overall household food consumption pattern, unlike per capita measurements 5. ARTIGO ARTICLE PER CAPITA VERSUS ADULT-EQUIVALENT ESTIMATES OF CALORIE AVAILABILITY 2189 Cad. Saúde Pública, Rio de Janeiro, 26(11):2188-2195, nov, 2010 Adult-equivalent scales are generally used in economic studies to allow comparison of expenses and purchases by households with different family compositions 6,7. However, few studies have focused on the use of adult-equivalent scales to assess dietary patterns 8,9,10. The current study aims to estimate an adult-equivalent scale for calorie requirements and identify the magnitude of the resulting differences as compared to per capita measurements of calorie availability in the Brazilian population, according to different economic strata and geographic regions, using data from the Brazilian Household Budget Survey (HBS) 2002-2003 conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).