> Good vegetarian meals are practically art in terms of their combinations of textures and flavors, not to mention colors. But they take a lot more skill to mak

> Good vegetarian meals are practically art in terms of their combinations of textures and flavors, not to mention colors. But they take a lot more skill to make, so people rarely encounter them. Indian food is vegetarian almost by default, has a spectacular variety, and doesn't rely on meat substitutes at all. This, of course, is after having developed and iterated a culture of vegetarianism over almost four millennia (the Ṛgveda mentions abstention from meat consumption, and was likely composed in 1900 BCE – 1700 BCE). This vegetarianism is a result of the Indian religions' tenet of ahiṃsā, or non-violence. From pani puri to paneer, and from sambar to sarson ka saag, I feel like everyone should look at Indian food to see exactly what 'vegetarian food variety' is. There's something for everyone: sweets, spicy (no, not all Indian food is diarrhoea-inducingly piquant), sour, savoury, bitter, stews (also called 'curries' in Anglosphere countries), stir-fried dishes, rice dishes, snacks—the sheer diversity is endless. Honourable mention to Chinese and South-East Asian cuisine, which do use meat analogues, and developed a breathtaking variety of 'mock meats' centuries ago, and developed their own vegetarian cultures from Buddhism (an offshoot of Hinduism anyway, and therefore an export of Indian culture). It's a very Western thing to eat so much meat, every meal of every day. More than one-third the population in India calls themselves 'vegetarian' (that's more vegetarians than the rest of the world, combined); the proportion of meals that are vegetarian anyway is significantly higher, approaching 80% or so[1]. Note that in India, 'vegetarian' typically means 'lacto-vegetarian and stricter' (includes veganism and Jain vegetarianism[2], which excludes root vegetables and the alliums). Seriously, Western people: make Indian food. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/08/eight-in-ten-indians-limit-meat-in-their-diets-and-four-in-ten-consider-themselves-vegetarian/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/08/eight-in-te... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism