Food historian and physician Manoshi Bhattacharya explains how the diet of Indians have changed over centuries
You have studied 2,000 years of Indian diets. Do you see intense political or public focus on food in the past?
Our ancestors largely followed the Mesolithic (8000-2700 BCE) concept of frugal meals, which included vegetables and meat. In India, the overall food intake was limited, with days of fasting interspersed. The demands on the plant and animal worlds were low. There were some aberrations though.
In 500 BCE when Jainism emerged, its followers became vegetarian. It was a choice of the rich and the elite who could eat frugally, while maintaining a plant diet. It was not popular. Today, the Jains are a minority community, despite the fact that most of them are recent converts to the faith.
Buddhism, too, saw something similar. The Buddha used to eat meat. Buddhists all over the world eat meat even today. But when Hiuen Tsang (a Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar)
— source downtoearth.org.in | Rohini Krishnamurthy | 29 May 2022