Why South Asians Still Aren’t Getting Enough Protein
Fitness nerds and doctors are telling us to pile on the macro. But for the community, the answer isn’t just “more.”
When Shaivya Vashishtha became pregnant, she knew she had to make a drastic change. Raised as a strict vegetarian, she developed anemia at 25, even after secretly adding eggs to her diet. So she added fish to fill the nutritional gap, which she also hid from her family.
It took getting pregnant years later for her to realize something was still wrong. “We started reading more about what nutritionally would be important for the baby’s growth,” the U.K.-based product manager told The Juggernaut. Even with fish, she still wasn’t getting enough of one key nutrient: protein.
It was a revelation. “You can say, like, how nutritionally uneducated or illiterate I was prior to this,” she added. Vashishtha isn’t alone. In the subcontinent and diaspora, a new conversation centering protein is taking hold: why many of us don’t get enough, why we didn’t realize it was important, and what this means for us, our families, and our communities.