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In India, to be vegetarian is to drink a lot of milk

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In India, to be vegetarian is to drink a lot of milk Empty In India, to be vegetarian is to drink a lot of milk

Post by confuzzled dude Thu Jun 11, 2015 8:50 pm

Being vegetarian means having a diet loaded with dal, sabzi and phal, right? Wrong — when it comes to India, at least.

Average household monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) on vegetables and fresh fruit is higher in fish- and beef-eating Kerala than in “vegetarian” Madhya Pradesh, whose Chief Minister has been in the news for taking eggs off the menu for anganwadi children.

No less revealing is per capita spends on pulses, vegetables and fruit in Rajasthan being below the national average for these items. Or, for that matter, vegetable consumption by the average person in Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura being higher than not just the corresponding all-India level, but even of “Vaishnav-Jain” Gujarat.

So, what really makes for “being vegetarian” in India, setting apart the ghaas-phoos types from the ‘non-veg’ types? The answer is to be found in milk. In 2011-12, the average MPCE on milk and milk products in India, at Rs 116.13 in rural areas and Rs 186.47 in urban areas, was way above the corresponding combined spending of Rs 45.62 and Rs 66.94 on egg, fish and meat.
Simply put, people in India who claim to be vegetarian are mostly lacto-vegetarians, and not vegans — those eschewing all animal products, including milk.

The man who interestingly recognised these fine differences was Mahatma Gandhi. In a remarkable 1942 monograph titled Key to Health, the Father of the Nation made a distinction between “vegetarian”, “animal product” and “flesh foods”. Milk, in the Mahatma’s view, was an “animal product”, and “cannot be by any means included in a strictly vegetarian diet”.
http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/in-india-to-be-veg-is-to-drink-a-lot-of-milk/

confuzzled dude

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