Indian cuisine is as diverse as it comes. It is  common knowledge that certain types of  food considered taboo by some are relished by others. How many times have we not seen vegetarians look at a meat loaded plate, crinkle their noses, and say, “How do you eat that stuff?” How many times have we not watched friends eat beef on the sly because their mothers would “kill them if they found out”?

We are quick to judge some food as unhealthy, and hence a bad thing. Some foods are even considered “contagious”. Dislikes that arise because one is used to a different way of cooking food are quickly legitimized in terms of hygiene and health. But have we ever questioned the legitimacy of the standards that we are using to reach these conclusions?

This skewed hierarchy of food is not a result of a recent campaign, but something more complex, older.  “[A] country can be said to have achieved complete food and nutrition security if each and every person in that country is able to consume a minimum quantum and quality of various ingredients of what I would like to call ‘an adequate and balanced diet’ on a regular basis,” reads a report ‘Indian Experience on Household Food and Nutritional Security’ by N.P. Nawani. But what constitutes this “balanced diet” is a matter of furious debate.

In India, this balanced diet is based on the Recommended Dietary Allowance or the RDA, for various age groups, including special groups like infants, nursing mothers and so on.   For a normal adult male the RDA recommended 2400 Kilocalories derived from a balanced diet.  The root of the problem, as Veena Shatrugna, formerly a deputy director at the National Institute of Nutrition points out, was that nutrition planning for the nation’s population inadvertently used the RDA to constitute an unbalanced diet consisting of cereals alone—because cereals were the cheapest, and the most easily available source of 2400 Kilocalories. This measure of nutritional requirements thus became an economic one, with the result that RDA had direct ramifications on the measure of poverty (the Poverty Line), in determining the per capita incomes that will enable a person to achieve daily intake of the required 2400 Kilocalories, and consequentially the minimum wages.  This also makes the Public Distribution System what it is today, i.e. machinery for doling out rice and wheat at cheap rates, but which does not distribute meat, eggs, nuts, or any non-vegetarian food. So in a country where vegetarians are a definite minority, we now plan our daily meals based on a Brahminical notion of a “desirable diet”.  Thus, modern India is produced as vegetarian. This was fine for the upper caste rich that had the luxury of eating 3-4 kinds of vegetables, and other supplements like milk, nuts, oil etc., along with their rice, but for the poor, this meant a serious lack of vital sources of energy. So if the poor man got his plate of rice, or 3 rotis a day, he was expected to be happy and satisfied. The cereal was expected to provide 2400 Kilocalories and whatever poor quality protein it yielded was implicitly taken as adequate (because that was what was possible). The result? We survived, but barely.

The question that arises is: Why didn’t nutritionists and bureaucrats look at alternate sources of proteins, more importantly meat proteins, which are not just widely consumed, but also recommended by medical opinion for a child’s growth, and even for anemic populations? Why was there no acknowledgement of differences in cuisines and the palate? The answer seems simple enough. The bureaucrats took the average Indian diet, but the average Indian that they had in mind was not the majority who ate meat, but the dominant upper caste minority. The preference of the brahminical minority became the norm.

The food that the various tribes used to eat, says Dr. Shatrugna, was never analysed for its nutrient content. So while we romanticized their customs, did detailed anthropological investigation on how they lived and how they married, there is very little research to evaluate what they eat, and how their food, or the lack of thereof is affecting their health, growth, childbirth or birth weight of their children. The result: 41.9% of adults belonging to the ST and 38.4 % belonging to SCs have Chronic Energy Deficiency, while the pooled average of the nation is 34.8 %. Further, 62.7 % of the children born to Scheduled Caste parents are under-weight, 57.6 % are stunted, while among the other castes it the numbers are 53.1 % and 50.1 %

Women suffer more. Most studies and recommendations are made with the modern working class male as the average and the requirements of the women are adjusted proportionately. Questions such as different working style, responsibilities, and requirements of the women are not taken into consideration. The birth weight in the low socio-economic groups has not increased significantly since the past 50 years. Pharmaceuticals rally to supplement women with iron, various multi-vitamin formulations during pregnancy, but with no significant impact. NGOs and activists blame the man—he eats first, the woman eats the leftovers, but the problem is much more complex, says Dr. Shatrugna. “The low socio-economic groups get 80% of their proteins from cereal. In a scenario where there is not enough food to eat, where is the point in asking the women to eat first?”

What we need to do now is take a second look at the standards that we have put in place. The items of food that were subtly delegitimized by the RDA—beef, mutton, chicken, fish, egg, etc., must be allowed to become a part of the daily diet of people of all economic strata. The argument that it is beyond the means of the lower caste man, just does not hold. Eggs are cheaper than vegetables; why are eggs not distributed via the PDS? Why are we raising a huge outcry over culture and heritage when eggs are being given out under the mid-day meal scheme? Why is eating beef against any religion?

The question why food becomes aligned to religion and caste may remain unanswered. However, in a society that lays claim to equality in opportunity and preferences, we need to realize that caste does not work in its open manifestations of discrimination and repression alone.

(Some students who wanted to put up a beef stall in campus for one of the student festivals were prevented from doing so. One of the arguments for the prevention was that beef was unhealthy. The Dalit Students’ Union approached Dr. Veena Shatrugna for clarity on the nutritional values of beef, and was given a letter certifying that beef was indeed neither unhealthy, nor “contagious”. See accompanying letter).

A post on the Out-Caste

Friday, March 21, 2008

1 Out-caste: A dalit studies course initiative, English and Foreign Languages University. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.  Accessed on the following link on August 9, 2012: http://out-caste.blogspot.in/2008/03/why-is-modern-india-vegetarian.html