I am a Gujarati boy and I love my Gujarati daal (sweetened split chickpea soup). I suspect it probably has an equal amounts of jaggery and chickpea. This sweetened jaggery daal was for a long time my idea of the best source of protein in a vegetarian diet. Like me, you too most likely have a favourite daal and you’ve also been told that this is a great source of protein. But today, I will show you through data and research - inherent protein deficits in an Indian vegetarian diet, why we are prone to the Indian belly (also called skinny-fat), my thoughts on the next superfood (no, it’s not a nut, seed, lab-grown, or generated by a chat-bot), and as a thank you gesture for reading my article - desserts that are a high source of protein.

My partner, in her first visit to India, pointed out how almost everyone she looks at has a belly. That got me to zoom in on peoples’ bellies every time I walked the noisy streets of Mumbai. After getting dizzy with all the belly-dancing around me, I looked for a more stable approach. A government survey from 2021 says over 56% women and 47% men have a high risk waist to hip ratio. On top of that, over 80% of Indians aren't even aware we face a protein-deficit in our diets in the first place.

I recently acquired the Indian belly too. This is what peaked my interest to find out more about our diets and evaluate if there is an opportunity in the protein consumption story in India. What I found out was the following: we eat too many carbs on a daily basis in our home diets (vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals). Even four small chapatis is 400 calories of carbs (excluding the generous clarified butter we add in). While, we probably have just one bowl of daal. Our proportions are all wrong. This is one of the main reasons why we have this body type - skinny fat. Gurinder, founder of South Asian Strong, does a really good job of explaining this body-type.

Why should you care?

Because you are naturally prone to being skinny fat and less healthy. Indians are fatter across all income segments. Indians are more diabetic than they’ve ever been. Even though we eat a lot and can afford quite a bit more than we could a decade ago, our protein consumption hasn’t really gone up. A recent study stated problems at two ends - 80 million are currently obese in India and we suffer from high undernutrition because of low dietary diversity in both poor and rich households.

The rationale for low protein consumption is usually attributed to being a poor nation that doesn’t have enough income to consume protein on a daily basis. This argument works for meat-consuming households. I don’t think it could work for a country that is a minimum 39% vegetarian. India also consumes tremendous amounts of pulses and the fact is households will continue to stay away from meat even with the rise in per capita income. So there needs to be a way to solve this consumption gap beyond just getting richer as a nation (China for example in the last decade). This is the Indian vegetarian population under 64:

So how much protein do we need and what are we getting (rich and poor)?

We’ve been told lentils/legumes are full of protein… and even nuts. To get the amount of protein we need a day (Indian regulation says 0.8g per kilo weight; general consensus is a minimum of 1g per kilo weight; current Indian ratio is 0.6g per kilo weight - that's 25% to 40% less than optimal), we would have to eat 3-4 bowls of my sweet daal or several bowls of peanuts. Like I highlighted earlier, the proportion of the meal is not optimal nor balanced.

So how do we break this status quo barrier in our households, urban and rural?

Indian households are familial. As you are well aware, the kitchen is a zone that has a few generals. To win this war, we need to educate our generals. If you are a millennial living with your family, the chief general in the kitchen is not going to listen to you either. Try me. It’s going to take a mammoth policy change from the government and shift its focus away from pulses. We have been focused on pulses far too long. India consumes over half of the world’s pulses. The production of pulses has grown slower than the population, resulting in a steady decline in their per capita availability and consumption over the last five decades.

Between now and 2050, there is a large protein gap that needs to be filled. But I think it’s going to be really tough to address this market opportunity. The opportunity:

$90B protein consumption gap today |

$600B Protein consumption gap in 2050 |

$90B protein consumption gap today | $600B Protein consumption gap in 2050 |

Ideal weight is prescribed by the National Institute of Nutrition; even though the Indian government prescribes 0.8g of protein for every kg of an adult, I have assumed 1g for every kg of an adult as the ideal weight is far from the true weight of an Indian adult. I couldn’t find statistics on the average weight of an Indian. Price of protein per gram has been taken as an average and assumed to grow at a CAGR of 4% until 2050. Egg has not been considered but shown for comparison. The market estimation is done on the gap as I have assumed it is the gap that will address the non-pulses segment.

Now that it’s established that it's a humongous opportunity. Is it really an opportunity?

Let’s think of our household lunch and dinner. Everything on the plate is commoditized and regulated.

In addition, Paneer and dairy supplements (whey) is a highly fragmented, over-competitive space with little innovation.

So we need to either add, substitute or complement our plate with a protein component in the coming decades. This is why I personally don’t believe there will be an opportunity to create a large scale product-focused company…except maybe:

Tempeh. Tempeh is an Indonesian preparation that is basically fermented soy beans. It has a good shelf life and is neither processed nor does it have a daily intake limit like soya chunks. After having consumed Tempeh for nearly a month now, I believe this is a product that has potential to scale and innovate. Tempeh unlike other protein products, imbibes all our Indian spices and doesn’t taste like meat. Tempeh in India is still at the nascent stage with Hello Tempeh and Tempeh Today being at the forefront of this revolution. Tempeh Today, promoted by Netherlands based producer Schouten, will launch 100 small-scale fermentation units in India in the next 5 years. Tempeh needs the push that Soya chunks received and needs to be addressed in governmental policy to bridge our conusumption gap.