India - Household Consumer Expenditure, January-December, 1983, NSS 38th Round

Meal
A 'Meal' is composed of one of more readily cat able (generally cooked) items of food, the usual major constituent of which is cereal food. The meals consumed by a person twice or thrice a day provide him/her the required energy of (calorie) and other nutrients for living and for pursuing his/her normal avocations. A 'meal' as opposed to 'snacks ' as opposed to 'snacks', 'nasta' or 'high tea' , contains larger quantum and variety of food. In rare cases, a full meal may contain larger quantity of non-cereal food. Even that, if the total quantum of food in plate is heavy as a meal, the contents of the food plate will also be considered as a real. Sometimes the contents of a 'nasta' may not be very different from the contents of a 'meal'. The difference in quantity will there be the guiding factor for deciding whether the plate is to be led as a 'meal ' or a nasta.

Ceremonies are performed to solemnize some events of life like, birth, annarambha, birthday, marriage etc. Members of a household may have to perform some religious rites consequent upon the death of a person. For various religious faiths, there are some days in a year which are observed with ceremonial performances like offering puja, prayer, ritual performances etc. Such ceremonies may be performed by household members as required under the social/religious customs and not incurring expenditure for entertaining guests. On the other hand, some households may spend some amount of money for entertaining guests with meals which are considered as essential part of the ceremonies performed by them. The purpose of providing this block in this schedule is to estimate the meals served to guests on ceremonies performed by the household during the last 30 days preceding the date of enquiry as also the meals served to guests and employees (non-members only) on any other occasion (other than ceremonies). Hence, only those ceremonies on which guests were entertained with meals, should be listed here.