Number Theory: Just over 50% Indians have three meals a day

Are Indians eating healthy? This is one of the most polarising questions on the state of India’s economy and the fruits it has delivered for 1.4 billion Indians. On the one hand are statistics which claim a massive reduction in poverty and very high rates of growth. On the other hand, there are instances, such as during the pandemic, when the government announced 5 kg of extra food entitlements for as many as 800 million people, suggesting that even basic food security continues to be precarious. There is also the more nuanced question of whether we have reconciled our analysis of food security to just the calorie question and are ignoring the deficiency of protein and other critical nutrients and the concept of balanced diets. Somewhere between these important and data dependent questions is a basic fact check about the number of meals people have in a day.