Even if Indians ate 2x the meat that they do now, they wouldn’t consume anywhere as much as Americans do. Increasing meat consumption in America is not necessary.

India would do well to consume more protein, and the US would do well to consume less

    > because a vegetable-heavy diet has been awful for our public health

I think the biggest health issue with India's vegetarian food is too many carbs.

If you want to actually get full and satiated with a largely vegetarian diet, you will eventually resort to carbs

And this is for a culture that really knows how to make smashingly good vegetarian dishes

I love my vegetables, but a vegetable-heavy diet is clearly not something that everyone can or should do. The people I know who retain their health with vegetarian/vegan diets are usually really well-versed in nutrition

Carbs and butter.

If you look at a lot of the indian vegetarian dishes you'll find things like potatoes fried in butter being a staple.

Chickpeas and yogurt do make a showing, but a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources. You need a lot more beans/nuts if you want to eat healthy as a vegetarian.

    > a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources

What about legumes -- daal (pulses) and chickpeas? They have plenty of protein for vegetable sources. Also: Paneer. What I find in practice: You get a tiny amount of legumes/paneer, and a huge amount of carbs.

Daal is great, but just not nutritionally dense. You will have to drink it by the bowlfuls to get enough protein from daal alone.

Chickpeas have the problem of digestion + prep. You have to soak them overnight, boil them, and only then cook them. There's a reason they're usually reserved as a high-effort Sunday dish in most household and not a daily meal

Well if you cook the vegetables in litres of ghee that’ll happen.

If you don't cook vegetables in plenty of fats, you will end up feeling unsatiated - at least the vast majority would if that's their only meal

Salads are great, but eat them 7x a week for 2x meals a day and most will end up binge eating some absolute trash just to feel full

has your government published any science on this? being completely serious, i'd like to read it. Is India mostly vegetarian because of lack of access to farms/meats, religious reasons, financial, or what? I didn't know it was largely vegetarian. I don't know i had an idea of the ratio or that it would be different than any other country.

Apparently the Mediterranean also is largely vegetarian. at least the eponymous diet is.

Most branches of hinduism condemn meat eating, so this has created a significant pressure against meat production (same as you'll find little production of pork in the Middle East and North Africa). This is not universal, of course, because historically many regions of India had large meat-eating muslim populations as well.

Note that this is typically lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, not veganism.

Maybe home cooking is, but every restaurant meal I bhave eaten near the Mediterranean had seafood or cheese in it.

Edit: you said vegetarian not vegan, and yeah lot of pasta dishes are vegetarian but not vegan.