May 29, 2022
Introduction:
(Janata Weekly) Non-vegetarian food consumers have increased in India, including in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, as per data released by the recent National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5).
This is significant because right-wing supremacists have been peddling the fase narrative that non-vegetarians are a small minority in India. In fact, it is based on this false narrative that state administrations have attempted to remove eggs from mid-day meal plans, and non-veg food vendors from the streets. However, latest health data shows that more people are joining an already significant non-vegetarian population.
Groups across India were surveyed from 2019 to 2021 owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, compared to the 10-year gap between NFHS-3 and NFHS-4, the recent report was published only after a gap of five years.
More meat-lovers in Gujarat
As per the data, non-veg eaters in BJP-led Gujarat increased by at least seven percentage points over five years. As many as 39 percent of 33,343 surveyed women and 51 percent of 4,957 surveyed men confirmed eating fish or chicken or similar meat. These percentages are higher than the NFHS-4 data (2015-16) when 30.8 percent of 22,932 surveyed women and 43.5 percent of 5,567 surveyed men said they consumed non-veg.
Moreover, by 2019-21, 2.4 percent women (around 800 people) and 2.1 percent men (104 people) consumed such non-vegetarian food daily. Another 17.8 percent women (5,935 people) and 18.5 percent men (917 people) ate the food weekly, while 18.6 percent women (6,208 people) and 30.3 percent men (1,502 people) ate it occasionally.
https://janataweekly.org/nfhs-5-data-bu ... tarianism/