In the larger backdrop of casteism and communalism that have been bogging down the country, milk must have a ‘ghar wapsi’ to its 'not vegetarian' status.
Published Sep 22, 2024 | 11:00 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 22, 2024 | 1:02 PM
Milk may contain white blood cells, mammary gland cells, and various bacteria.
When Indian-origin ‘pure’ vegetarians are told that milk and other dairy products are, scientifically speaking, animal-source foods and therefore not ‘pure’ veg, they often have exaggerated meltdowns (like animal fat ghee).
Their vehement arguments and assertions that dairy is ‘veg’ range from being ignorant to downright bizarre.
Having labelled cow’s milk as vegetarian, proponents of vegetarianism seem to have no issue in classifying human breast milk as vegetarian! Some even believe that the mother’s breasts are separate vegetarian entities, producing pure vegetarian milk.
In the process, scientific thought and rational thinking get further submerged in a downward-spinning vortex of propaganda and mythology. In the larger backdrop of casteism and communalism that the country is reeling under, milk must have a ‘ghar wapsi’ to its ‘not vegetarian’ status.
Some claim that religious beliefs should not be analysed through the scientific lens. This is a fair point because most religions would fail to meet scientific standards. So is the argument that vegetarianism should not be challenged with pettiness or aggression since it is a personal belief. Some claim that if the animal doesn’t die while providing food, then that food is ‘veg’.
No hen dies laying eggs, yet there is enormous resistance to providing eggs to children in the mid-day meal scheme. Would the practice of bloodletting, which provides the Maasai — an ethnic group of semi-nomadic people in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania — a high protein, nutritious food without killing the animal be vegetarian?
As a public health doctor, I have been taught to classify beliefs or practices into harmful, harmless, and good. While good practices should be encouraged, the harmless ones can be left alone. Only the harmful must be challenged and countered.
Milk being promoted as vegetarian food could be considered harmless if these same ‘pure’ vegetarians had not used their dietary choices as a tool to downgrade and humiliate everyone else.
Exaggerated drama and fragility against ‘non-veg’ on flights, trains, public spaces, institutions of higher education, schools, and workplaces make all these public spaces toxic for meat-eaters, who are forced to constantly tiptoe around the fragile vegetarian sensibilities – sensibilities that seem to go into hyperactive aversive mode even at the drop of a spoon!
Classifying beef as impure and milk as pure has led to attacks, often fatal, on those suspected of consuming or transporting beef — a macabre display of mob violence that is inhuman and pathological in every aspect.
Poor Muslim men begging to be spared with pleads of ‘bhaiyya’ should tear at our souls and spark outrage: it doesn’t, because it is couched under the implicit presumption that anything to do with beef is dirty, impure, unclean and therefore punishable, the more brutal and vicious the better. Anti-slaughter laws in the country enable this mob violence to no small degree.
Milk consumers, on the other hand, place themselves on an elevated, higher plane as satvik and pure. How is it that milk gets bracketed as satvik while other animal-source foods get downgraded to the apparent lust and criminal tendency-triggering tamasik and rajasik foods?
Milk is an animal-source food, just like meat, eggs, fish, poultry, etc. This food group is different from plant-source foods, which typically have poorer digestibility, lower availability of quality nutrients, and therefore not nutrient-dense.
Animal-source foods are crucial to address the nutritional deficiencies of the country. Vitamin B12 is found only in animal-source foods, including milk.
Mammals have some common features and one of them is that the species has mammary glands that produce milk to feed their babies. Milk itself is an emulsion of fat globules within a water-based fluid and contains proteins, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, etc.
Cholesterol, phospholipids, and free fatty acids are also present in milk. Derivatives of animal milk such as whole milk, butter, and cream have high levels of saturated fat. Milk may also contain white blood cells, mammary gland cells, and various bacteria.
Milk protein is similar to other animal proteins and has high biological value. Importantly, it also contains Vitamin B12, which is absent in any other plant-source foods. Soon after the calf or human baby is born, the milk, called colostrum, is produced, which is high in nutrients and antibodies.
These nutritional facts are crucial to be recognised because milk and allied products have been the primary animal-source foods that have helped vegetarians avoid severe nutritional deficiencies. Vegetarians need to understand and acknowledge this scientific truth before creating unscientific boundaries of ‘veg’ and ‘non-veg’.
Attributing ‘veg’ status to milk creates a winning situation for vegetarians. They consume animal-source food without acknowledging it. Simultaneously, they stake claims on all kinds of casteist mumbo-jumbo such as ‘Brahmin genes’, ‘general merit’, ‘upper’ caste, etc. The meat-eaters on the other hand, face a losing situation.
It is important to classify milk as ‘not vegetarian’ when it comes to nutritional and health indicators.
Some show examples of well-nourished and well-built vegetarians as proof that vegetarianism is superior and better than other animal-source foods such as fish, eggs, poultry, meat, etc. This is used to augment the fake narrative that India is predominantly vegetarian and this goes on to bring out vegetarian food policies for the country.
The overload of cereals and millet with little access to nutrient-dense foods for the vulnerable communities of the country is largely responsible for the nutritional crisis. While rich vegetarians access dairy in the form of curd, cheese, butter, ghee, etc., they are largely unavailable in cheap vegetarianism that is being forced upon the poor. Neither are they able to eat animal-source foods of their choice nor can they afford expensive dairy products in recommended quantities.
In effect, they are pushed into cheap, almost vegan diets against their will. Their malnutrition is therefore not because they are ignorant (as most researchers on nutrition make them out to be) but rather because they lose access to nutrient-dense foods. Even educational institutions which are supposed to be rational scientific spaces claim that all animal-source foods other than milk are offensive to the super-sensitive vegetarian.
A good intake of dairy protects vegetarians substantially from malnutrition and several deficiencies. They have therefore, on one hand, appropriated milk and given it a sanitised space while making no effort to make it available to others at affordable costs — and criminalises all other animal-source foods.
This is why the duplicity has to be called out.
When these supposedly rigid, hierarchical, and unscientific boundaries between ‘veg’ and ‘non-veg’ are blurred, it becomes clear that most Indians are not very different from each other in the kind of foods they consume.
Labelling one kind of animal-source food as impure and another as pure is a form of casteism that tosses our nutritional and other development indicators into a downward spiral. The sooner these casteist and unscientific notions are relegated to the trashcan, the quicker will these exaggerated food-based fragilities be addressed and automatically translate to better and more scientific policies.
When some of us met the Karnataka government officials to demand the inclusion of eggs in the mid-day meal scheme, some of them responded, saying milk is already being given under the Ksheera Bhagya Yojana. It is like saying, “You have cement for your house, why do you need bricks?”
Each food can contribute different nutrients, so having diversity is key and crucial. Children need eggs, meat, milk, vegetables, and other foods. While one argues about the importance of eggs, it should be questioned how milk is more acceptable than any other animal-source food. This has serious repercussions — how children are treated in schools, who gets to rent/buy houses, who marries whom, etc.
Vegetarians are indoctrinated early to feel superior because of the foods that they don’t eat. In their heads, their self-classification as vegetarians offers them instant (like Maggi) superiority, cleanliness, etc. They even falsely believe that vegetarianism makes them more ‘meritorious’ and deserving of the best and well-paid positions.
Those who are not ‘veg’ are routinely harassed, denied basic rights, and abused as though their food choices allow them to be abused, harassed, demeaned, denied jobs and housing, and even lynched. This makes most spaces toxic and life-threatening for many people from vulnerable communities.
Labelling one animal-source food as pure and others as impure is neither scientific nor fair, and it’s high time that policymakers understood this aspect. Acknowledging this could hopefully lead to more evidence-based policies on food and nutrition.
(Dr Sylvia Karpagam is a public health doctor and researcher working on social determinants of health. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
