Tiptoeing Around Meat in India’s Nutritional Minefields.
Dr. Sylvia Karpagam looks at the vegetarian politics which prevent action on diabetes
India has the dubious distinction of being the diabetes capital of the world, with 8.7% people in the age group of 20–70, or 50 million people living with Type 2 diabetes in India. It is an attributable risk factor for several complications affecting the eyes, heart, kidney, nervous system and circulatory system. People who have had a heart attack or stroke have a high likelihood of a previous history of diabetes. Diabetic retinopathy contributes to 2.6% of global blindness. Patients in India with diabetes induced kidney failure face the grim prospect of dialysis, with its exorbitant cost and poor availability, or a kidney transplant, which is often mired in illegality.
Since healthcare in India is largely privatised, unregulated and market driven, prevention of Type 2 diabetes would be considered less ‘lucrative’ than the curative care of debilitating consequences of poorly managed diabetes. The Indian health system is neither ready to handle the consequences of diabetes, nor is it affordable to a majority of Indians, who in the absence of any protective healthcare, are mostly left to choose between a poor public health care system or an exorbitant private system.
In reality, cutting down on sugars, reducing traditional cereals (read carbohydrates), and increasing the consumption of animal source foods, has the ability to drastically prevent or reduce the large scale prevalence of Type 2 diabetes and its complications. However in India, food and nutrition are potential landmines that can blow in your face and kill you.
In India, politics, culture, religion, caste and economics around cereals, vegetables, fruits, pulses, oils, eggs, meat etc., constantly dictate what people eat. Even a suspicion of transporting beef or a mention of its nutritional/cultural/religious value can trigger a series of events ranging from abuse, arrest, harassment and lynching. This has been used with great elan by politicians seeking to fragment India along caste and religious lines.
Religious bodies state that ‘eating meat is not recommended for those who want to elevate their consciousness and progress in their spiritual life’. Eggs, described by some as the ‘menstrual discharge’ of the hen are labelled as ‘sinful’, ‘violent’, and agitating the senses, with egg eaters deserving to be ‘destroyed’. Eggs, even for children is relegated to the dark corners of culinary no-no, which in the backdrop of alarming malnutrition in India, seems particularly tragic and ill-informed.
Meat eaters are vilified continuously. The look of horror and disgust on a vegetarian’s face at the very mention of the word meat is to a small extent intuitive and automatic, but to a major extent is a deliberate exaggerated caste marker, meant to distance oneself from the polluting, inferior associations of meat at every possible opportunity.
In reality, this goes in the face of statistics of meat eating in India. Only about 30% of Indians identify as vegetarian, and this too could be an inflated number because of the stigma surrounding meat eating. A majority eat meat regularly or would like to if they had the resources. Nutrition policy makers, who are predominantly vegetarian, have decided that most Indians cannot afford meat, and have therefore erased it from most of their nutritional recommendations. There is also a need to fit India into the image of vegetarianism that foregrounds only one caste group as predominant and representative of India’s ‘culture’. Ironically, milk and milk products are conveniently labelled as vegetarian ignoring their animal based composition.
Anyone who is diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in India is likely to repeatedly hear one specific bit of unsolicited advice ad nauseum — from parents, children, grandparents, relatives, teachers, employers, neighbours, friends, cousins etc. and that is to “Stop eating meat’. Ironically, this ‘nutritional advice’ is also given by medical professionals, counsellors, nutritionists, dieticians, teachers etc. irrespective of what is taught in their text books. Many vegetarians, by nature of the caste structure in India, also occupy white collar positions. They are therefore in an unique position to dictate the eating culture of the country and unfortunately use this privilege to the hilt. Considering the nutrition related health issues in the country, existing healthy eating practices have to be nurtured and supported. Instead they are being corroded by the shenanigans of a few in the name of purity/pollution, clean/unclean etc. This is burdening the country.
Giving up meat is seen as a panacea to all the health issues of the country. In fact, the more vegetarian one claims to be, the higher they are rated on the ‘nationalistic’ scale, with meat eaters being readily classified as ‘anti-national’.
Burdening patients with the responsibility of exercise as a way to control Type 2 diabetes is inadequate if the prime responsibility is not placed on diet. Multinational food companies are constantly sniffing around for devious ways of entering the food market in India and bring in the risks associated with processed foods. Although many Indians still cook food in their homes, the cultural onslaught that criminalizes animal foods is detrimental to the health of the country as a whole.
It is time the vegetarians in India take stock of their role in aggravating the diabetes crisis in the country. It’s not up to the meat eaters to prove their nationalism by giving up their healthy traditional meat eating practices. The burden is actually on the vegetarian policy makers, teachers, doctors, counsellors, nutritionists etc. to stop sending out wrong messages to people they hold power over. The vegetarians of the country need to acknowledge that addressing diabetes is far more in the national interest than criminalising people’s food choices.
The writer is a public health doctor and researcher who is part of the Right to food and Right to Health campaigns in India.
