How India eats

Although India is a predominantly non-vegetarian country, the most frequently consumed food here are milk/curd, pulses/beans and dark green vegetables — more than 74% of Indian men and women consume these three categories of food at least once a week, while no other categories of diet are consumed on a weekly basis by more than 50% of its people. Eating habits are driven by religion, wealth and residential locations. Other factors — age, level of education, family status — can also affect the diet of a certain category of Indian people. While men and women tend to have lifestyle under the Indian culture, there is no significant gender-specific characteristic in the consumption of food.

Women

• When it comes to what Indian women eat, there is no significant difference across different ages, marital status or even maternity status.
• Among Indian women in all ages, almost 90% consume pulses or beans at least once a week — their favourite food, with dark green vegetables (85.5%) and milk/curd (68%) their second and third favourite.
• Aerated drinks appear unpopular among Indian women, with only no more than 24% of them have it weekly.
• While urban Indian women consume food of all kinds more frequently than their rural counterparts, the gaps are the widest in fruit (62.9% compared to 36.5%), chicken/meat (40.4% to 28.4%) and aerated drinks (31.9% to 19.8%).
• Women with more years of education tend to eat more food of most kinds, with exceptions in a few categories. Women who have been through 12 or more years of schooling have food of all kinds more frequently, except eggs (42.4%), fish (34.1%), and chicken/meat (33.3%). Women with less than 5 years of education consume fish (43.4%) and fish/chicken/meat (51.8%) more frequently than others.
• Across different religion, eating habits vary. While people with different faiths are similar in the consumption of pulses/beans (89.9%) and dark green vegetables (85.5%), the Jain and Sikh tend to have significantly more milk/curd (91.5% and 85.2%, compared to 68% on average) than others, and much less eggs (9.7%, 9.0% to avg.41.4%), fish (7.4%, 2.4% to avg 34%), chicken/meat (7.8%, 4.4% to 32.6%) and fish/chicken/meat (8.6%, 4.8% to 42.8%).
• Eating habits of the historically disadvantaged people are generally similar to each other.
• In the dimension of wealth index, the percentages of wealthiest Indian women who consume milk/curd (85.5％ to 68% on avg), pulses/beans (93.6% to avg 89.9%), dark green vegetables (87.6% to avg 85.5%), fruits (74% to avg 45.7%) and fried foods (48.1% to 45.5%) weekly are the highest, while more fourth-class Indian women have eggs (46.7% to avg 41.4%), fish (37% to 34%), chicken/meat (39.0% to avg 32.6%) and fish/chicken/meat (48.6% to avg 42.8%) on a weekly basis.

Men

• Eating habits across Indian men of different ages are largely similar to each other except for a significant drop in weekly consumption of aerated drinks as they get older. 36.2% of Indian men aged 15–19 have sparkling beverages weekly and the percentage drops below average (31.6%) among the 30–39 age group and then down to 27.2% among the 40–49 group. Only 25% of men aged 50–54 have aerated drinks at least once a week.
• Widowed or divorced/separated/deserted tend to have lower percentage of weekly consumption of any kind of food than married men or those who have never got married.
• Similar to women, more urban Indian men tend to have weekly consumption of food in all categories, and largest gaps are in fruit (62.6% vs 43.0%) and aerated drinks (38.7% vs 28.1%).
• With a few exceptions, men with more years of education tend to consume foods more frequently. Especially in the fruits category — 63.4% of men with 12 or more years of schooling take fruits weekly, compared to 35.2% of men with schooling who do so.
• In the dimension of religion, the Sikh and Jain community, who tend to adopt vegetarian diet, are much less likely to consume eggs (19.3% and 4.4% respectively, compared to avg 49.6%), fish (5.0% and 2.6%, to avg 38.8%), chicken/meat (10.0% and 2.7%, to avg 40.7%) and fish/chicken/meat (10.8% and 3.5%, to avg 49.1%). The proportion among Buddhist/Neo-Buddhist who weekly consumes of aerated drinks is also significantly lower (19.4%) than average (31.6%).
• Among historically disadvantaged Indian men, eating habits are largely similar, with the exception of the scheduled tribe, who are much less likely to consume milk/curd (55.8%, to avg 75%) and aerated drinks (31.7%, to avg 31.6%) on a weekly basis.
• Among different wealth indexes, the fourth and highest classes tend to consume foods more frequently than the other three, with the most significant gap in fruits, where the highest percentage among all (71.2% of the Highest) more than double that of the lowest (25% of the Lowest). The four categories where the fourth class are more likely to consume weekly than the Highest are eggs (54.6% to 46.9%), fish (41.4% to 34.0%), chicken/meat (46.8% to 39.5%) and fish/chicken/meat (54% to 45%).

The data has been analysed from National Family Health Survey-4.