CHENNAI: A few months ago, the West Bengal government had initiated a move to drop eggs from its mid-day meal scheme and replace them with plant-based alternatives like paneer, soya, rajma and others. After major pushback, the Suvendhu Adhikari-led government withdrew the move. But does soya equal the protein intake that is provided by an egg?
Public health doctor and researcher Dr Sylvia Karpagam’s book ‘The Meat of The Matter: How the Politics of Food Shapes Our Health’ deals with many such questions, myths and food habits that often governments, cultures and corporations enforce upon the public. She looks beyond the plate at what and who determines who eats what.
Answering the original question, she says, “Giving soya and millet to children is, firstly, difficult to digest, which means that they won’t feel hungry for a longer time. So, they need to be given digestive food that is nutrient-dense.”
An egg contains 6-8 gms of protein, while a much larger quantity of soya has to be consumed to meet that nutrient requirement. The book, thus, was born out of this necessity to bust myths and misconceptions around food and nutrition, says the doctor. While doing research as a community health doctor, Dr Sylvia and her team visited many parts of the urban and rural areas, including schools, and places where kids eat. In schools, they found that while the mid-day meal programme was not being implemented in many places, there were also structural issues
There are questionnaires where there is no mention of meat, or food items, other than what the researchers consider a good source of nutrition. So, when the community denies consuming plant-based food, they are declared nutrition deficient. Also, when there’s no question about meat, the community is declared ignorant and their food habits are erased- Dr Sylvia Karpagam, author, The Meat of The Matter: How the Politics of Food Shapes Our Health
“For example, handing over the programme to an organisation like Akshaya Patra (owned by ISKCON). We found that it’s an ideological institution that’s openly casteist,” she recalled. “Their menu is devoid of all the items that communities normally eat; they also criminalise food items, saying it causes lust and violence. They also talk to teachers and students about it. A lot of indoctrination happens, which is enabled by the extreme right-wing governments.”
On a light-hearted note, referring to Tamil Nadu’s recent proposal to add chicken biriyani to the mid-day meal menu, she jokes, “So even if it’s chicken biryani served to children, let it be more chicken and less biryani.”
Dr Sylvia explains that communities, over the years, have figured out what nutrition means, what to eat with what they have and maximise even plant-based diets. Humans are biologically built to consume meat on a regular basis. “As humans evolved, so did our digestive tract, and it is not that we have always lived with these systems. Though we cannot consume everything, our grandmothers figured out long back on what works best and how it should be eaten to be had for the best possible outcome,” she opines. “For example, rather than highly processed soya as it is consumed now, the right way to consume it is by fermenting it.”
However, she laments that ideological bias is undeniable when researchers study the communities and their food habits. “There are questionnaires where there is no mention of meat, or food items, other than what the researchers consider a good source of nutrition. So, when the community denies consuming plant-based food, they are declared nutrition deficient. Also, when there’s no question about meat, the community is declared ignorant and their food habits are erased,” she points out.
Often, governments want to fix a deficiency by distributing tablets, but nutrient deficiencies need a holistic approach and they should begin with food.
Dr Sylvia also adds that casteism plays a huge role while creating and implementing policy. “When a Dalit student is stunted or tired all the time, it’s labelled as a result of caste and not because of the lack of nutrition in the children,” she says.
Often, governments want to fix a deficiency by distributing tablets, but nutrient deficiencies need a holistic approach and they should begin with food. “This book is mainly for communities that have been traditionally marginalised and whose foods have been criminalised, to have a reference. So they can say this is the traditional food we’ve been eating, and this is their nutritional value,” she adds.
When asked if there was anything as bad as eating too much meat as human beings, Sylvia says that one can consume the right amount of meat even every day. “There are six food groups, and each group should contribute to your meal, at least four a day,” she explains. “Cereals and millets, like ragi and rice, form one group. Second is pulses and legumes (soya, dals, karamani, peas, rajma, chana). Third is milk and dairy, fourth is fruits and vegetables, fifth is meat, poultry, fish, etc, and the last is fats and oils. One has to consume things from 4 of these categories to have a balanced meal.”
Coming to the vegetarianism question, she says that it’s a misconception that milk and dairy are all plant-based foods; however, they are animal-based. She adds that the flag-bearers of vegetarianism are pushing it on the poor.
“While people glorify the model of vegetarianism, what is being pushed on the poor is a cheap vegetarianism that is nutrient-deficient. Our children deserve better,” she states.
Through her book, she presents research on how some plant-based alternatives are expensive, inaccessible and also do not provide the nutritional value that an animal-sourced food can provide. “Meat-based iron is haem iron that is more easily absorbed by our body than iron from plant-based sources,” she explains. “See, there are no plant-based alternatives for nutrients like B12; you have to look for an animal source. And these sources are cheaper. There is nothing like soya milk; it is merely an extract.”
Vegans, on the other hand, would find it impossible to meet their nutritional requirements.
Stating that the burden of climate change cannot be put on the poor, she says: “My question is, why do we want to compromise on children’s health without making these options accessible for the marginalised? A cow slaughter ban also affects those whose livelihood is through livestock, so what is their choice?”