Green dot in a green square, as most of us know is a symbol used for marking the ‘Vegetarian’ packaged food products in India. This useful marking system though mandatory in India, is not available elsewhere. Plus, even in India it doesn’t guarantee vegetarians that they are always eating vegetarian food, like when eating non-packaged food or eating out or for example.
Living a vegetarian life is an even bigger challenge outside
India. Given the small percentage of vegetarians, ‘Vegetarianism’ is a practice
not only less understood but also far more difficult to explain in a foreign
land. People often mistake me to be either ‘vegan’ or someone who eats only
seafood (and I wonder if water animals aren’t made of flesh and blood).
Anyways, so for those who do not understand ‘Vegetarianism’,
we are those who consume plant-derived foods and abstain from eating eggs and all
kinds of meat including seafood but not necessarily milk and milk products. We
even go beyond this, some portion of the vegetarian population also consumes
eggs but not meat, yeah it might be funny to consider but it is increasingly becoming
a more common way of living a vegetarian life. Vegans, however avoid any and
every animal product including dairy, honey, silk, wool, leather etc. So,
basically ‘Veganism is a subset of Vegetarianism’ but the two eating
preferences are not synonymous.
Now in case you are wondering, the purpose of writing this
blog is not to propagate a certain way
of living life or an eating preference, rather its an endeavor to create
awareness among vegetarians regarding the commonly used food products that are
apparently so vegetarian that they don’t even have the privilege of a second
thought from the buyer, but indeed are not vegetarian. Green dot marking (in
India) and food labels (everywhere) are significant paraphernalia to ensure you
know what you eat. But, do you actually look at the labels all the time and for
all the products? I didn’t…atleast till recently and the reason why I’ve become
so obsessed with these labels is what I’ll be sharing with you all here. I
understand that it is not possible to
put hours to read every label on everything that goes into your shopping cart
but what if you know specifically what to look for when reading labels on these
‘apparently vegetarian’ foods? Yes, that is exactly what I am going to try and
do (i.e. simplify decoding the labels and thus make the process less time
consuming for you).
That said, I would also want you to know that no matter how
much I want to, I will not be able to make this blog a ‘one stop guide’ to all
kinds and varieties of products available in the market (given the humongous
amount of information on the subject). The effort is to tell you that ‘there is
much more than what meets the eye’. As such, I do very much encourage all my
readers to get into the habit of scanning the food labels. If you are
particular about what you eat, labels are not something you can do away with;
not to mention the sense they give to my efforts here.
Happy Reading!
