Reinventing India’s carb-heavy diet with protein, indigenous foods
From upma and poha to idlis, parathas and puris, meals across India comprise carbohydrate-rich food, each with its ritual and regional identity. In the northern states wheat is the staple cereal, while the southern and northeastern states prefer rice. India’s food is inextricably intertwined with the cultural and the nutritional.
But increasingly, evidence indicates that these food habits have trapped Indians in a cycle of poor health. The Indian Council of Medical Research-India Diabetes study, published in Nature Medicine in October, quantifies how India’s diets are dangerously imbalanced: across states, over 60% of calories come from carbohydrates, mostly refined rice and wheat, while protein and healthy fats make up only a fraction of the intake about 12%, and animal protein just about 1% of total caloric intake, far below recommended levels.
The conventional food that most Indians eat broadly consisting of refined cereals like white rice and wheat, along with potatoes and added sugars in the form of roti, upma, puri, parathas with vegetables and dal is stripped of diversity that is undermining public health.
This carbohydrate overload correlates strongly with the increase in non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity. The Nature Medicine study found that those consuming the highest proportion of refined carbohydrates had markedly higher odds of developing type 2 diabetes and abdominal obesity.
Researchers, in an article titled “The Double Burden of Malnutrition and Diabetes in India” published in the Diabetes Asia Journal in July, say this diet has created a paradox where 43% of India’s population is overfed yet undernourished, suffering from the “thin-fat” phenomenon where high caloric intake masks severe nutritional deficiencies. This reflects in what is causing Indians to fall sick, with the National Institute of Nutrition estimating that unhealthy diets are causing 56.4% of the country’s total disease burden.
These findings indicate a marked shift where India’s food security challenge is no longer about inadequate calories but what kind of food makes up a meal.
Dietary advice alone cannot correct this trajectory: it requires institutional redesign and cultural renewal, where indigenous food can be rebranded as nutritional alternatives. A combination of policy measures, such as the Odisha Millet Mission, cultural intervention, like celebrity chefs, and institutional cooperation, through schools and canteens, can make indigenous and nutritional food a symbol of modern consciousness rather than backwardness.
Cultural excess, nutritional neglect
Carbohydrates have long been a cultural anchor. The bigger and more elaborate the carbohydrate-based dish, the more it signals prosperity. This is possibly the result of cultural attachment as well as colonial hierarchies, or even sociological emulation, where, for instance, lower castes follow the lifestyle practices of upper castes. Cultural and religious taboos around meat, particularly beef and pork, have narrowed cheap sources of nutrition. In many homes, even eggs are contentious. Children grow up eating rice or chapati with dal, which is comforting but nutritionally narrow. These eating are instilled early, missing out on the opportunity to shape taste and habit.
Agricultural policy can also alter food habits, like the Green Revolution which led to the mechanisation of farming while high-yielding wheat and rice varieties. India’s agricultural as well as public food distribution system has deepened this dietary monoculture. Public procurement and subsidies overwhelmingly favour rice and wheat.
Millets, pulses and oilseeds that once formed the backbone of local diets are marginal. Yet, these are precisely the grains that are best suited for a climate-stressed world: they are drought-resilient, nutrient-dense and have a low glycemic index, which means they digest slowly, causing a gradual and steady rise in blood sugar levels rather than a dangerous spike.
Millets and pulses once dominated Indian diets because they fit the soil, the climate and the stomach. Historically, these grains accounted for nearly 40% of all cultivated grains in India and were the staple diet for much of the population.
But following the green revolution, the country locked itself into rice and wheat monocropping. Those choices made sense in the 1960s, when India had to import food to feed its growing population, but today they are untenable – environmentally, economically and nutritionally.
Millets such as ragi, jowar, bajra, kodo, foxtail, little and barnyard should make up at least a quarter of national grain consumption, but is less than 10% right now, according to government consumption data. Changing eating habits will benefit farmers too, as a mixed system of millets, pulses, oilseeds and livestock crops is more climate-resilient than the rice-wheat treadmill.
Reimagining public meals
The Centre’s Integrated Child Development Services and mid-day meal schemes, aimed at improving child nutrition and reducing malnutrition, could be frontline instruments of change. Instead of just rice and dal, children should eat millet rice/rotis, porridge, mixed-grain khichdi, pulses, oilseeds and protein-rich food such as eggs, meat and fish. Early exposure normalises food variety and establishes lifelong dietary diversity.
Procurement norms could follow this shift: states should be mandated to source a proportion of millets and pulses locally for school and anganwadi kitchens, which provide mid-day meals to children. Linking kitchen gardens and small livestock to these programmes can close the loop between local production and nutrition.
But changing the food on the plate will also mean confronting stigma. Millets need to be rebranded from being the poor man’s food to being positioned as climate-smart heritage food. Campaigns led by nutritionists, public figures and community kitchens could help drive change.
Similarly, nuanced messaging can normalise the sustainable consumption of animal-source proteins where acceptable, recognising that nutritional adequacy must precede moral absolutism.
Initiatives such as the introduction of ragi into the Integrated Child Development Services and public distribution system by the Karnataka government, and the revision of anganwadi menus by the Kerala government show how there can be a shift toward diversity. Yet, such examples are not the mainstream forces shaping India’s food system.
For farmers, crop diversification can be a livelihood insurance. A cropping mix of millets, pulses, oilseeds and small or large livestock builds ecological and income resilience. Agricultural policy must support crop diversity through assured procurement, price support and water and energy incentives that will move farmers away from paddy-wheat dependence.
Finally, the meaning of food security must reflect nourishment, rather than mere survival, rooted in culture, climate and community. The re-engineering of public food systems and cultural imagination must value variety over volume, offering a healthier alternative to India’s dietary path.