The experience in India is markedly different, given just how many people are vegetarian there (for a ballpark figure: at any mealtime, about 1/3 the Indian pop

The experience in India is markedly different, given just how many people are vegetarian there (for a ballpark figure: at any mealtime, about 1/3 the Indian population, or about 500 million people, eats a fully-vegetarian meal). Restaurants and chains proudly advertise that they only serve 'pure vegetarian' food, and people—even not-vegetarian people—flock to them in droves anyway. Western veg(etari)an labelling has motifs of leaves, or plants, etc. Indian labels are a lot more subtle and abstract: a green dot in a green square for lacto-vegetarian, and a red/brown triangle in a red/brown square for non-lacto-vegetarian (ergo, egg products are in this group)[1]. The Indian labelling is also mandatory, so all food packaging and every menu item in Indian restaurants has to be accompanied by a green or red icon (this however leads to some mildly funny things like 'chicken tikka masala powder' being itself vegetarian, but the dish that it is used in being non-vegetarian). I think this whole disdain for vegetarian labelling is entirely because vegetarian food has got a terrible rep in the West. This is likely due to poor experience in cooking vegetables (no one likes steamed broccoli), to narrow restaurant options, to simply not being exposed to other cuisines besides American, French, and English. I've already given Indian cuisine as the gold standard for delicious vegetarian food; other alternatives (that may not necessarily be traditionally entirely vegetarian) include Indonesian, Tibetan, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican, and Italian. Final addendum: every study on vegan/vegetarian food should include a subsection or two containing a case study on India. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/FSSAI_new_labels_for_veg_and_non-veg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/FSSAI_ne...