Question

What is the impact of geography and climate on food habits?

Answer 1

The debate about the benefits of vegetarianism versus meat-eating (non-vegetarian being a peculiarly Indian term as it takes the former rather than the latter as the norm!) will never be conclusively settled. It’s also perhaps, at one level, an India-versus-the-world debate, as nowhere else is the consumption of non-meat items so prevalent as in Bharatvarsha.

This week, there was a news item saying that food experts are now veering round to the view that rather than “five-a-day” being the optimum portion of vegetables to be eaten by a person, it should be ten-aday. To me that sounds suspiciously like a reluctant western acknowledgement of what many Indians have been doing for aeons – the more veggies, the better.

Any perusal of eating habits down the millennia will also reveal to the lay food historian that northern— ie colder—cultures have a tradition of eating more animal products than warmer southern ones. The reason could simply be climatic, developed over a period when air transportation and cold chains did not make anything available anywhere, round the year.