Every time I sit down with a new client and ask them to walk me through a typical day of eating, I hear some version of the same story. Poha and chai in the morning. Rice or roti with dal and sabzi for lunch, though often the dal is more water than dal. Dinner is much the same. Maybe some curd on the side. And through all of it, the protein, that one macronutrient their body is quietly desperate for, barely makes an appearance.
India has the lowest average protein consumption at 47 grams per person per day, as compared to other Asian countries as well as developed nations. (Suri, Shoba. (2020).
Study after study confirms it, across cities and villages, across income groups, and across age brackets. And yet, we rarely talk about it with the urgency it deserves. We obsess over sugar, over fat, over calories. But protein? It hides quietly in the background, underestimated and barely eaten.
To understand why, we need to go back almost a century. Early 20th-century India was a country under colonial rule, with most families surviving on limited incomes and feeding many mouths. Rice and wheat were cheap, filling, and available. Pulses were expensive, meat was avoided by a large portion of the population for religious reasons, and the Green Revolution of the 1960s, while solving hunger, accelerated single-crop cultivation of grains rather than protein-rich foods. Over generations, carbohydrates became the foundation of the Indian plate. And that foundation slowly became the entire building.
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As children, we were told to finish our roti. Finish your rice. Clean your plate. Nobody said finish your dal, eat more chicken. The message, repeated at every meal across millions of households, was clear: carbohydrates were the meal. Everything else was an accompaniment.
I think about this often in my practice. The food behaviours we carry into adulthood were written for us at the dinner table when we were five years old. If protein was always the afterthought, always the small katori pushed to the side, always the thing that ran out first and wasn't refilled, then of course we grow up not giving it much thought either.
And then there are the myths that too much protein damages the kidneys. That protein supplements are only for bodybuilders. That dal is enough, so why worry? These beliefs, passed from one generation to the next, have done quiet but significant damage to how Indians eat.
Where's the protein?
This is the question I ask my clients, sometimes literally. We look at their diet recall, and I could not help but ask where the protein was. Often, we struggle to find it. A small amount in the dal, a little in the curd if they've had it, maybe some in the roti, though barely any. Across three full meals, many Indians are consuming less than half the protein their body actually needs.
The consequences are not always obvious. Protein deficiency doesn't announce itself dramatically. It shows up as fatigue that won't lift, as hair that keeps falling, as poor recovery from illness, as children who aren't growing as well as they should. It is a slow, quiet depletion.
What makes this harder is that India's protein gap is not simply a problem of poverty or access, though those are real factors. I have sat with highly educated, financially comfortable families across India, even though they are significantly protein-deficient. Not because they can't afford better, but because it simply never occurred to them to eat differently.
Indian cuisine, at its best, is actually full of protein potential. Rajma, chana, moong, paneer, curd, eggs, tofu, fish, chicken, all of these offer meaningful protein. We need to go forward to a more balanced version of it.
Start by asking yourself that same question at every meal: Where's the protein? Make it a reflex. If your breakfast is only poha or upma, add sprouts, an egg, or curd alongside. If your dal looks more like soup than lentils, make it thicker. If you're having roti and sabzi, make sure there's a proper serving of dal or paneer or legumes on that plate too. They are small, practical shifts that fit into the meals you're already eating.
Changing a family's eating pattern takes time. But awareness is where it begins. Teach children early that the dal matters as much as the roti. Bring this conversation into schools, workplaces, and homes.
The WHO My Plate concept, which simply illustrates how a balanced meal should look, is one of the most underused tools in public health education in India. If more people understood what a protein-adequate plate actually looks like, half the work would already be done.
My suggestion to you this week is simple. Look at your meals today and ask honestly: Where's the protein?