India - Household Consumer Expenditure, Jan - Dec 1997, NSS 53rd 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.

The number of meals consumed by a person is usually reported as 2 or 3. In rare cases, one may come across a person who may be taking food only once in a day or more than three times a day. While in the former case the number of meals for the person will be 1 per day, in the latter case, however, only 3 should be entered. That is, in this column, the recorded number of meals taken in a day, even if it is reported to be higher, should not exceed 3. A breast-fed baby does not directly share the food consumed by members of the household. Hence for such babies the entry in this column will be '0'.