Introduction: Hunger and poverty elimination are the basic responsibilities of the country. This depends on the availability, purchase and consumption food items or commodities in the respective countries. Periodical assessment is essential to support to country’s commitment.
Objective: To find the purchase and consumption of food items, and health status among families of different workers in the rural area of Pondicherry.
Materials And Methods: A community based cross sectional quantitative descriptive study is conducted in rural area of Pondicherry during March to April 2015 among 300 families of sedentary moderate and heavy workers by using pilot tested structure, questionnaire at the door steps of residents. Data are collected on purchase and consumption of different food items for the last 7 days. Analysis was done using Microsoft EXCEL, proportion, mean, per capita, purchase on various worker families.
Results: The mean of family member was 4.3+1.4 among 1177 population and there were 17, 61 and 22% of families belonging to sedentary, moderate, heavy workers. The purchase of food items on per capita per day basis was Rs51, Rs 55 and Rs 56 among sedentary, moderate, heavy workers respectively. The families spent nearly 47% of their total monthly income towards purchase of food items or commodities. 73 people were suffering from chronic diseases and 50 % of them belonging to moderate worker family, 34% are heavy workers family.
Conclusion: The per capita per day of Rs 54 was spent on purchasing food items and it was purchase of food commodities was inversely proportional to the family size. The detailed analysis may be taken periodically for comparison and betterment of the community.
