I understand that Kellogg's the man that was behind the breakfast cereal push in the United States was of the mind that eating meat would indeed make us more passionate or lustful. So he wanted people to eat cereal to lower those impulses and I think he succeeded. But where I'm going with this is that the idea that eating meat will make you rebellious or aggressive or lustful is actually based in the idea that actually yes, eating meat makes you strong and makes your hormones function properly and makes you a leader. It isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's definitely been identified as wrong or evil in the society it sounds

like. Yes. And off-late it's not just beef but there's targeting of meat eaters. There are a lot of colleges and universities that are supposed to be progressive spaces which are trying to make spaces vegetarian, preventing students from eating any form of meat in the premises. Eggs are being targeted. We actually have a very large school feeding program. We have the Medema scheme which is a legal entitlement of the children and so children, majority of the children who go to these schools are some of the poorest children, the lot of malnutrition. Most of them actually traditionally use to eating meats and eggs at home but they solve the policy around nutrition is such that there's a large scale resistance to eggs. Many schools refuse to give eggs. Children have been given to organizations that are openly cast as which they actually have a very strong presence internationally also even in the US. They're called the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. So they do a lot of fundraising in the name of these children saying they are feeding these children but their whole premise is sat-thick food. Similar to what Kellogg's is saying basically the children, their hunger that they feel is not real hunger. Children aren't able to concentrate because they're eating all these bad foods. So we will give them these sat-thick foods which is good for their brain development and they have definitely refused to give eggs. They say eggs are the menstrual discharge of the chickens and so they say no to

it. Wait they say eggs are

the what? You don't want to hear this. Menstrual discharge of the chickens.

So they think by consuming eggs and meat is going to make the children lustful or bad students all the myths out there I guess they believe.

And they have been given the contract to huge number of schools in the country because they have huge capital. They have huge social capital. And the first who target them are called anti-Hindu. They say they are against them because of their religion. Those of us who are not Hindus are often targeted for calling out these kinds of organizations.

This is exactly what happens all around the world. If you have a dissenting opinion you are slander. They plaster you with a label because it's like name calling in the schoolyard. There's no defense for what they're saying and so they just resort to name calling.

And then there's a whole gang that comes together.

Sylvia what are the consequences of eggs and meats being removed from the school lunches?

We have like two large national surveys in India on nutrition and they actually have pretty horrible nutrition indicators for most of the country. Some states which independently decide that on nutrition policies do quite well and some do very badly. And on an average for the country if you like for example take children 8, 6 to 23 months. Only 42% of children have actually received the minimum number of times feeds but they were fed like the minimum number of times per day. Only 21% of children had a diverse diet that is at least more food groups and children who had both adequate diversity and adequate frequency were just around 6%.

That's so low. 6%.

And we have like only 9% of children who received iron rich foods. We have high levels of vitamin A deficiency, vitamin B12 deficiency, zinc deficiency and these are all documented. So I'm not just throwing statistics just like that. We have like almost 35 to 40% of children who are stunted that is they have less heights for their age. We have almost like 38% children who are underweight basically less weight for their age. An anemia is almost 57 to 59% even among children. If you look at all of these they don't come in isolation. So it's very unlikely that a child who is stunted is not going to have the other deficiencies. So children usually have multiple deficiencies that contributes to the infant mortality rates. It contributes to higher rates of infection among these children and like the girls also end up having early pregnancies they can have that can be more maternal mortality can be more infant mortality. And also India is considered as a diabetic capital because even though people have physically thin

they also have a lot of non-communic diseases.