Sing is king: A nutty way to solve India’s protein problem

My grandfather had his ways of being annoying — such as spending a lot of money that he did not have — but his social sympathies were broad. His best friend, for many years, was a Muslim — they went together to Edinburgh to study back in 1938 — and I cannot recall him expressing any serious prejudices. But when it came to cricket, his theory of why we Indians didn’t have any good fast bowlers (this was the 1970s) came down to — “ora to shader dalna khay”—they, Muslims from Pakistan, our regular tormentors, eat curried oxen (and we don’t).Medium108408201 I didn’t have access to Wikipedia then, and perhaps had no reason to question his wisdom. It turns out that per capita annual meat consumption is very similar in India and Bangladesh, and very little (4kg a year). It is much higher in Pakistan (16 kg) but the corresponding number for China is four times as much, and that for the US eight times bigger. Meat is simply not an important part of the South Asian nutritional profile, even though it has an important social role to play. Celebration, for Christians and Muslims, but also Bengali Hindus, has a special place for meat dishes. In my grandfather’s ancestral village, now a part of Kolkata, water buffaloes were sacrificed during Kali puja to affirm our shakta credentials. My grandfather offered to take me when I was seven or so. I demurred, petrified by just the idea.This was before the time of Javagal Srinath, the famously vegetarian fast bowler, much before the unabashedly macho Hardik Pandya, who brings a cook with him when he travels to support his vegetarian diet, or the brilliant Ravi Ashwin, who though not a fast bowler definitely has the height and the muscles to be one. Even the gentle Jaspreet Bumrah, who so terrifies batsmen around the world with his fast bowling, talks about his fealty to traditional, mostly vegetarian, Punjabi food. Being vegetarian is no barrier to being big and strong.Why then, if not for our primarily (but for the most part, not exclusively) vegetarian diet, is India the stunting and wasting capital of the world? According to WHO, we have the second highest fraction of children under five who are radically underweight for their height (wasted). And before blaming poverty, note that this puts us below civil war-torn Yemen, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, and at least 50 other countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, that are all poorer than us, in many cases much poorer. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, has a per capita GDP, adjusted for purchasing power, that is one-eighth of ours, but their wasting rates are less than half as much.Inequality matters of course — a lot of that per capita income goes to the rich — but even if we compare poverty rates, DRC, by the World Bank metric, has almost thrice as many poor people as us. Even within India, richer states like Gujarat and Maharashtra, with relatively low poverty rates, have among the highest wasting (and stunting, i.e. low height for age) rates.Medium108408204 It is not genetics either. Indian children born and brought up in the UK are no more wasted or stunted at five than the local population, even though their immigrant parents are shorter. And perhaps more tellingly, as insightful research by my friends Seema Jayachandran from Princeton and Rohini Pande from Yale shows, while the average Indian child is shorter than the average child in the much poorer countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the oldest male child in Indian families is actually taller. Not so the oldest female child and not the others, male or female.The same facts also tell us that while unsanitary conditions and unclean water and the resulting prevalence of diarrheal diseases is an important reason why Indians grow up short, it cannot be the whole story, since (a) open defecation is an even bigger problem in many African countries and (b) first-born boys and other children from the same families presumably grow up under the same environmental conditions.Jayachandran and Pande argue that a lot of the problem comes down to the resolute preference for the oldest male child among Hindu families (the gap between the first-born boy and the rest is substantially smaller among Indian Muslims). We apparently lavish all our resources and attention on that lucky boy, letting the others fend for themselves. He does benefit but what the rest lose is tragically larger (which makes me, as the oldest male child and the tallest in my family, start to feel slightly embarrassed).Jayachandran and Pande’s assessment is that this misallocation of resources within the family can by itself explain perhaps half of the India-Africa gap. For the rest, it is true that the share of food in total spending is lower in India than in most comparable countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh (both of which do much better in terms of child wasting, despite being poorer) but it is not clear how much of that is because grains are heavily subsidised under the Food Security Act.Indeed, the problem in India might be precisely that we get too many of our calories from grains, and too little from proteins. The recent EAT-Lancet reference diet suggests that people should get 29% of their calories from proteins. While there is probably a margin of error, the recent estimate by a team at IFPRI in Delhi led by Manika Sharma that rural Indians get just 6% of their calories from proteins has to be worrying. Even the richest Indians in the NSS data get only about half of the recommended amount. The problem, to come back to where we started, is not meat — the Lancet recommended diet is mostly vegetarian — but other, more sustainable proteins.In West Africa, peanuts are that source of protein. In much of India, peanuts are what we eat while waiting for better things. Changing dietary attitudes is not easy — especially for those who are not addicted to Masterchef Australia — but perhaps public feeding programs (say, during social or religious celebrations) offer an opportunity. My taste for the wonderful thick Punjabi dals, to take an example, came out of visits to a langarkhana at a nearby gurdwara. I can still picture myself, seventeen and gawky, hesitating by the door in the winter sun, guilty for eating free what I could afford to buy. Then, distracted by the wafting fragrances and my rising greed, I stepped right in.This is part of a monthly column by Nobel-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee illustrated by Cheyenne OlivierMedium108408207 Recipe for Maafe, a peanut stew Here is a baby step towards bringing more peanuts into our diet — a recipe for the warm and wonderful West African peanut stew, maafe, passed on by Cheyenne’s friend William Guittard. Beware of peanut allergies.Peel 500 gm of sweet potato, 500 gm of pumpkin, 2 plantains and 2 carrots and cut them into 1-inch pieces. If so inclined, add 400 gm of (ideally) organic, bone-in free-range chicken meat from the legs and thighs, cut into 1.5 inch pieces. Heat 4 tablespoons of some neutral oil in a large heavy saucepan at medium-low heat, throw in the vegetables and when they start to acquire a reddish tint, add the chicken and brown quickly (2 minutes). Remove from heat and separate the plantain chunks and chicken pieces. Put the pan back at medium heat, adding oil if needed to have at least 2 tbs oil left. When the oil is hot, add 2/3 cup medium chopped onion and 3 cloves coarsely chopped garlic to the oil. Cook till the onions start turning brown, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to low, add 1 tbs grated ginger, one sliced red chili and 4 tbs double concentrated tomato paste and gently work them into the oil. Add 1 liter of vegetable/chicken stock, 1 tsp of turmeric, ¼ tsp chili powder. 1 tsp of salt and a few turns of a pepper grinder and bring to boil. Add in the plantains, reduce heat to medium low and cook for ten minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables (but not the chicken). Cook for 20 minutes at medium-low, covered. Take out ¼ cup of the vegetable infused broth and beat in 3 tbs unsweetened peanut butter in to it. Add it back into the cooking broth, set heat at low and add 4 washed cups spinach/mooli greens/shalgum greens with the thick stalks removed, and the chicken. Let cook for 15 minutes. Check for salt and spiciness.