GENDER AND DIET CHANGE IN THE CENTRAL HIMALAYA
By
Deepa Iyer

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies
2012

ABSTRACT
GENDER AND DIET CHANGE IN THE CENTRAL HIMALAYA
By
Deepa Iyer
Himalayan agricultural systems, health systems, and diet have been undergoing
significant changes over the past fifty years. It has been argued that many of the changes in
traditional agricultural systems have had a detrimental effect on the natural environment as
well as on traditional culture and knowledge systems; and significant activism and research are
taking place in the region to document and preserve traditional agricultural knowledge and
apply it to current problems. However, there is limited research on diet change in the
Himalayan region, though the traditional agricultural system and diet are closely related.
Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with elder women villagers in the
Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand, India, women’s experience of diet change, recollections of
the traditional diet, and of factors affecting diet change were explored. The main findings are
that diets have shifted from a complete reliance on traditional crop varieties and home-grown
food, to an increasing dependence on store-bought food. Women view the traditional crops
and foods as healthier than store-bought food, yet also have past experiences with hunger and
dietary restrictions due to their gender roles. These experiences of hunger, along with changing
structural conditions, may be contributing to the shift away from the traditional diet.

Copyright by
DEEPA IYER
2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work would not have been possible without the support of my committee
members, Dr. Wynne Wright, Dr. John Kerr, and Dr. Estrella Torrez. Not only have you been
willing to help me with my research and my thesis, you have encouraged me to study what I am
passionate about. I respect you as academics and professors, and also very much appreciate
your friendship, which I hope will continue in the years to come. I would like to especially
acknowledge Dr. Wynne Wright for spending many hours discussing ideas and words with me,
and for supporting me as a student and as a friend throughout these last two years.
I am also extremely grateful to many professors, colleagues, friends and family members
who have spent hours discussing ideas with me, and who have also helped keep my spirit alive
through dance, music, conversation, laughter, and good food.
Finally, without the sun, water, soil, air and the many, many living beings I am
connected to in each moment of my life, I would not be here at all to breathe this breath.
Thank you. I can only hope that my work will in some way contribute to a better world for all
creatures.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………………………………..vi
LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………………………vii
1.INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………………1
2.LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………………………………………….8
India and the Central Himalaya..……………………………………………………..25
3.SITE DESCRIPTION……………………………………………………………………………………..34
4.METHODS………………………………………………………………………………………………….45
Population………………………………………………………………………………………..48
Data Collection Sequence…………………………………………………………………49
Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………….55
Validity…………………………………………………………………………………………….56
5.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………………..58
A.Diet Change…………………………………………………………………………………..59
B.Women’s Perceptions of the Traditional Diet………………………………..86
C.Structural Conditions Related to Diet Change……………………………….99
6.CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………….117
Further Research……………………………………………………………………………..136
APPENDIX A: Interview Question Guide……………………………………………………….139
APPENDIX B: Focus Group Question Guide…………………………………………………..140
APPENDIX C: Verbal consent script for Interviewees…………………………………….141
APPENDIX D: Verbal consent script for Focus Group Participants…………………142
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………………………143

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1. Characteristics of the Five Patterns of the Nutrition Transition………..………….….19
Table 4.1. Interview Profiles……………………………………………………………………………………………..52
Table 4.2. Focus Group Profiles………………………………………………………………………………………...53
Table 4.3. Samples of Codes Used in Data Analysis………………………………..………………………….56
Table 5.1. Greens..……………………………………………………………………………….……………………………63
Table 5.2. Grains and Grain Dishes…………………………………………………………………………………….68
Table 5.3. Fruits and Vegetables…….………………………………………………………………………………….72
Table 5.4. Pulses………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..76
Table 5.5. Dairy Products…….…………………………………………………………………………………………….78
Table 5.6. Wild Foods………………………………………………………………………………………………….…....80
Table 5.7. Oil Seeds……………………………………………………………………………………………………………81
Table 5.8. Drinks………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..83
Table 5.9. Spices....…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….84

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1. Map of India…………………………………………………………………………………………..35
Figure 3.2. The Middle Hills of the Rudraprayag District …..…………………..……………….37
Figure 3.3. Terraced Agricultural Fields…………………………………….…………….………………37
Figure 3.4. Map of the State of Uttarakhand …………………………………………………………..40
Figure 3.5. Rudraprayag District Map……………………………………………………………………….40
Figure 5.1. Silabata ……………………………………………………..………………………………………….84

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1. INTRODUCTION

Though changes are always taking place in what people eat, the pace of diet change
worldwide has accelerated in the last 50 years (Popkin 2006). Diet change can bring about
many positive outcomes such as the alleviation of hunger, increased variety of foods, and
access to needed nutrients that can make a population healthier. However, diet change can
also bring about negative consequences including diet-related diseases such as diabetes and
cardiovascular disease, a loss of cultural food ways and food-related knowledge, and an
increased dependence on purchased or processed food, which can lead to the loss of a
community’s ability to either provide for themselves or to control their own food supply. As
our food system becomes more industrialized, standardized, and controlled by a relatively small
number of actors (McMichael 2000), arguably both positive and negative consequences are
experienced by people worldwide. These consequences, then, are the impetus for a better
understanding of the complexity and the tradeoffs involved in diet change.
In the Himalayan region of India, many changes have taken place over the last fifty years
due to such developments as roads, schools, and markets (Kreutzmann 1991; Rawat and
Sharma 1997). Many of these changes may be considered positive for mountain communities:
increased access to medical clinics; primary and secondary educational institutions; increased
tourism leading to possibilities for income generation; and the ability to travel and
communicate more easily (Rawat and Sharma 1997). However, there are also corresponding
losses as a result of these developments.

1

Road construction in the Himalaya has led to greater soil erosion and landslides (Rawat
and Sharma 1997). Changes in what are considered traditional agricultural practices have led
to increased soil erosion, loss of agricultural biodiversity, and loss of agricultural knowledge
(Maikhuri, Rao, and Saxena 1996). Increased contact with tourists and increased migration to
urban centers can also lead to a desire to modify cultural practices, including traditional
foodways (Tripathi and Srivastava 2011). The loss of cultural practices and traditional foodways
can have not only negative health impacts, but can also represent a loss of knowledge that has
been generated over hundreds of years, and that has allowed communities to survive on their
natural resource base (Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996; Narayanan and Kumar 2007). Though
many communities may want to transform their cultural practices and diets, seeking to
experience the benefits of the global, industrialized food system, these same communities may
also value and rely upon their traditional diets. However, it may be difficult for Himalayan
communities, for example, to maintain control of their diet in the face of a globalized food
system when living in relative isolation, and when food markets begin to become the major
source of food, with no options for alternatives other than to grow their own. Moreover, it is
unclear as to how greatly the diets of Himalayan communities have changed in the context of
so many other social, cultural, political, and ecological changes.
Though significant research has been done and continues to be carried out on the
changes to the traditional agricultural systems in the Himalaya (see Maikhuri et al. 1996; Negi
et al. 2009), research on changes to the traditional diet and foodways remains more limited. In
these communities, the agricultural system and the food system and diet are very closely
linked, as they tend to be in subsistence communities, and I would argue, in industrialized
2

societies. However, the exact nature of change in the Himalayan diet over the last fifty years
has not been documented in detail; nor have the possible health, cultural, and political
consequences related to a significant change in diet. Though some research has been done on
diet change in India as a country, which has indicated that there are significant increases of
diet-related disease nationwide (Misra et al. 2011), the unique context of diet change in distinct
regions such as the Himalaya has not been documented in detail. Moreover, the reasons for
these changes in diet, which can reveal opportunities to address negative consequences of diet
change, have not been fully understood.
Furthermore, gaining an understanding of the first-hand accounts and impressions of
diet change, as lived by villagers in the Himalaya, provides a detailed understanding of the
actual changes in the day-to-day food habits, the experiences and views of the traditional diet,
and structural factors that may be affecting changes in the diet, both negatively and positively.
Elder women have been the primary cultivators and food preparers in Himalayan households
(Agarwal 2002; Mukherjee 1999), and grew up eating the traditional foods. Therefore, due to
their lived experience of the traditional diet and the ways it has changed and continues to
evolve, elder women can be considered experts on the subject.
This study aims to answer three main research questions in regards to the changing
foodways in the Himalaya:
1. How has the diet in the central Himalaya changed over the past fifty years, from the
vantage point of elder women?

3

2. What are elder women’s experiences of the traditional diet? How do they view the
traditional foods?
3. How have changes in structural conditions affected the dietary changes, as
experienced by elder women?
In order to gather this information, this study employed 14 semi-structured interviews
and three focus groups, with a specific emphasis on gathering the insights of elder women ages
60-80, in the Rudraprayag District of the state of Uttarakhand, India. The fieldwork was carried
out over the months of June and July, 2011 with the help of local guides and interpreters.
During this time I had the opportunity to observe daily life when I stayed with village families
while carrying out the fieldwork.
The main findings of this study show that 1) the traditional diet is slowly being replaced
by food supplies purchased at the local markets; 2) women view the traditional diet to be much
healthier than the foods they purchase in the markets, but they also associate the traditional
diet with regular experiences of hunger and with food restrictions based on gender; and 3)
several structural conditions are affecting the ability of respondents to access their traditional
crops and foods – factors such as roads and food markets, decreasing crop yield, agricultural
work, and climate change.
First, respondents described different aspects of the traditional diet such as greens,
grains, pulses (beans and lentils), and spices, their eating habits, as well as the ways those
traditional ways of eating have changed. In almost all aspects of the diet, women described a
process of decreasing consumption of traditional varieties of crops and home-grown foods, and
4

an increasing dependence on food purchased at the local markets. For example, the women
described several different types of roti (flat bread) they and their families used to prepare and
eat on a regular basis using combinations of many different traditional grains; whereas in the
present, women generally prepare roti using wheat purchased at the local markets (transported
from the plains regions of India), and occasionally use one or two other types of traditional
grains to prepare roti.
Secondly, women described many health benefits of the traditional foods including high
energy and nutrient content and medicinal properties. Overall, respondents felt that the
traditional diet was healthier, and that people in the past were stronger and fell sick less often,
due in part to the diet. At the same time, women shared many experiences of hunger, of
working long days with little to no food, of limited choice and variety, and of the restriction
placed on their consumption of “better” foods such as rice and wheat because they were young
women in their household. These experiences led to negative associations with the traditional
foods, and to an increased desire to purchase foods from the market, have the freedom to
choose what they would like to eat, and to eat wheat and rice more often. Thus, the
experiences women have with the traditional foods directly affects the food choices they make
today, which are increasingly in favor of purchased foods and away from the traditional diet.
Finally, women described some structural factors that have affected their access to their
traditional foods, and which also play a role in the significant diet change the respondents are
experiencing. Respondents have experienced a decrease in crop productivity in recent years
due to a number of ecological and political reasons, which makes the cultivation of home-

5

grown foods less viable (Maikhuri et al. 2001). Women also shared experiences of the
challenges of agricultural work itself, the convenience of the food markets, and climate change,
all of which have affected their ability to access traditional foods, and which play a significant
role in dietary change.
The results of this study indicate the rich and detailed information that individuals can
provide in regards to understanding the context of diet change in a particular region. National
and global trends, while critical to understand, must be supplemented with a picture of regional
variation in diet change. When seeking to address the complex consequences associated with
diet change, the experiences of the people undergoing the changes themselves can reveal the
areas where policy and programs can be the most effective. Moreover, it is critical that
gendered experiences of diet and diet change are taken into account.
In the following chapter, I begin this narrative of changes in the Himalayan diet by first
reviewing the literature that defines and describes traditional diets from different areas of the
world and the changes these diets have undergone; research that has documented both
positive and negative consequences as a result of changes in traditional diets; reasons for these
changes; and finally, literature that describes diet change in India, and of the Himalayan region.
In Chapter Three I describe the site in which I carried out my fieldwork — the state of
Uttarakhand, India, and the Rudraprayag district. I then describe my research methods based
on interview and focus groups, as well as my methods of analysis, in Chapter Four. Chapter Five
presents the results of this study by highlighting diet change as experienced by elder women
and their ties to household, community, and regional transitions. I conclude in Chapter Six by

6

arguing that these results demonstrate the need to understand the complexity of diet change in
specific regions within the context of national or global trends; the importance of individual
experiences as a rich source of information of diet change, as well as the gendered nature of
diet change; and finally, recommendations for further research. Though the traditional diet in
the central Himalaya provides many benefits in terms of health and ecological sustainability,
and is of great importance in terms of cultural and knowledge preservation, the diet is also
gendered. Women have not only been the backbone of the traditional agricultural system, they
have experienced the traditional diet in unique and gendered ways. Thus, women’s
experiences can help to develop a future hill diet incorporating the benefits of the traditional
foodways as well as the benefits of the changing diet, and also point to the importance of
sharing responsibility for the agricultural and food systems in the Himalayan region.

7

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Traditional agricultural and food systems that have been passed down for generations
and that have developed in relationship to local ecological systems and cultures, are built on
indigenous knowledge that has allowed communities to survive for hundreds, if not thousands,
of years in their environments (Kumar and Pathak 2010). These two systems are closely linked
as they deal with the production, processing, and consumption of food, especially in
communities that mostly consume what they themselves produce (Hawkesworth et al. 2010).
Moreover, traditional agricultural and food systems are becoming more important to research
in the areas of agricultural development, food security and health (Frison et al. 2006) as some
of the highly destructive consequences of modern systems are revealed, and as the traditional
food systems begin to disappear. Research into the ways in which these traditional systems
are changing, as well as the reasons for the changes, can help to address negative health and
ecological consequences communities face as their food systems transition.
Kuhnlein and Receveur define a traditional food system as: “all food within a particular
culture available from local natural resources and culturally accepted. It also includes the
sociocultural meanings, acquisition, processing techniques, use, composition, and nutritional
consequences for the people using the food” (1996: 418). Traditional agricultural systems
“represent centuries of accumulated experience of interaction with the environment by
farmers without access to scientific information, external inputs, capital, credit, and developed
markets” and are characterized by a high degree of plant diversity and cropping systems which

8

promote a diverse diet; decreased insect and disease incidence; and efficient use of local
resources (Altieri and Merrick 1987: 88). As environmental degradation and diet-related
diseases increase in relationship to the rise in industrial food and agricultural systems,
traditional systems can provide vital information and techniques as a corrective. In their work
linking agricultural biodiversity to nutrition and health, Frison et al. call for the “reintroduction”
of traditional and indigenous food systems as resources to help with modern diet-related
diseases, malnutrition and “eroding agricultural diversity,” particularly in the developing world
(2006: 176). Moreover, understanding the ways in which traditional food systems are
changing, and the reasons for those changes is crucial in addressing the negative consequences
many communities, households, and individuals experience as they encounter the byproducts
of industrial food systems.
Traditional food systems are characterized by a high level of diversity – in the types of
plants used, both species and genetic diversity; the sources of animal protein; the methods of
acquiring food, often a mixture of hunting, gathering, cultivating, and fishing; and the methods
of processing food (Fleuret and Fleuret 1980; Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996). The results of this
study show that traditional food systems also include diverse consumption practices, in
particular, gendered consumption patterns. This gendered experience, in the case of this
study’s participants, includes restrictions on women’s consumption patterns, and is an
important factor in women’s participation in moving away from the traditional diet. Therefore,
traditional food systems are not entirely positive for all members of the community. This topic
will be taken up at greater length in the Results and Discussion section.

9

Traditional food systems also include staple foods such as starches and grains, small
game, and plants. These plants are either cultivated, gathered from the wild, or gathered from
areas that have been cleared and include mushrooms, leafy greens, fruits and roots (Fleuret
and Fleuret 1980). Moreover, many of these foods are very high in nutrient content, such as
the high mineral and vitamin content found in traditional African leafy greens (Mnzava et al.
1999). The systems are also based on acquisition and cultivation practices that in many cases
have allowed populations to sustain themselves in the same environment for hundreds of years
(Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996).
For example, tribal communities living in the state of Sikkim, India in the Eastern
Himalaya gather up to 190 wild edible species of plants as part of their regular diet, while
continuing to cultivate their traditional grains (Sundriyal and Sundriyal 2001). These wild plants
are gathered when they are seasonally available, a practice that has allowed these communities
to survive in this region for thousands of years while maintaining an incredibly rich natural
biodiversity in the local ecosystems. The wild edible plants also contain high levels of fiber,
vitamin C, and iron (Sundriyal and Sundriyal 2001).
Another example of a traditional food system in a very different environment is that of
the Inuit, from the Arctic region of Canada. Their traditional food system is based on animal
meat and fat as those are the only sources of food regularly found in their environment.
Though a diet based mostly on meat seems as though it is not diverse, the Inuit eat many
different types of meat. The types of animals they eat include seals, whale, caribou, and fish;
and to a lesser extent arctic hare, ptarmigan, polar bear and a large variety of other birds,
mammals and fish (Boult 2006). Berries and herbs are also an important part of the diet when
10

available. In addition, food sharing is an important part of their culture, such as the sharing of
seal meat with other families. This practice is followed not only to maintain positive social
relations between families, but is part of a belief system and a set of practices that directly aim
to maintain healthy populations of seal and other hunted animals (Borré 1991). Though
traditional food systems have been acknowledged as important sources of human nutrition by
international bodies such as the International Conference on Nutrition (1992) (Frison et al.
2006), and are based on practices that in many cases have allowed communities to sustain
themselves on the same natural resource base for hundreds of years, these systems continue to
change and adapt as indigenous communities come into contact with industrial agricultural and
food systems. Many times the changes result in the loss of vital knowledge, as well as negative
environmental and health consequences.
As many countries develop, and as indigenous populations globally become further and
further removed from their traditional practices, their populations are shifting from their
traditional agricultural and food systems based on a local resource base, to industrial systems
based on a global resource base (Damman, Eide, and Kuhnlein 2008; Popkin 2001). Though
there are many positive attributes associated with the industrial food system such as
convenience, taste, and high productivity, it is important to understand the many negative
consequences that result from a shift away from traditional food systems. Such an
understanding can help communities in the midst of transition, do so more healthfully. Diet
change is leading to such consequences as increases in sugar and edible oil consumption, which
is linked to health problems, such as increasing rates of diabetes, obesity, and other dietrelated diseases (Kearney 2010); increasingly degraded environments, due to the introduction
11

of high-input industrialized agricultural systems (Shiva 1991); significant loss of cultural
practices and knowledge systems (Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996); and loss of food sovereignty
(Pionetti 2006).
Health problems that have resulted in communities as a result of a shift away from the
traditional diet include diabetes, obesity, and other diet-related diseases, what is being called
the “nutrition transition” (Popkin 2006). This transition is also linked to the “double-burden” of
diet-related diseases in developing countries that simultaneously struggle to provide for the
basic needs of their populations (Popkin 2001). Countries such as Brazil, China, India and
Mexico, which are rapidly industrializing, are struggling with this double-burden (Kearney
2010).
Scholarship on the “nutrition transition” has mostly focused on national-level trends in
diet change, and has mostly emphasized health as a negative consequence of these changes.
For example, important information on obesity levels for high-income as well as developing
countries has been gathered, such as the increasing percentage of overweight and obese men
and women in both rural and urban settings in countries such as China, Brazil, Mexico, and the
US. This information has been compiled and compared and linked to diet change and lifestyle
shifts (Martorell 2002; Popkin 2006). Increasing rates of diabetes worldwide, from 30 million
people in 1985 to 135 million people in 1995, have been linked to increased consumption of
sugar, increased body fat, and decreased physical activity associated with an increasingly
urbanized global population (O’Dea and Piers 2002). These trends are related to greater access
to processed and packaged foods high in salt, sugar, and fat, as well as decreased levels of
physical activity as urban populations tend to move less (Popkin 2002). This national and global
12

level information is critical for understanding trends that are taking place worldwide and that
are affecting millions of people, in a world that is only becoming increasingly urbanized.
However, this scholarship can be enhanced by research that provides information on the
serious impacts (aside from health) on culture, sovereignty, knowledge systems, and ecological
systems that are also related to diet change, the variations that take place regionally, the
perspectives and experiences at the community or individual level, and different experiences
due to gender or other demographic variables.
Kuhnlein and Receveur (1996) cite numerous cases of significant change to the
traditional diets of diverse communities such as the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert; the
Nuxalk, an indigenous community in British Columbia; and the Hopi of the Southwest United
States. These communities were not only found to have significant health problems associated
with diet change, but to have also consistently lost traditional food practices and knowledge,
and experienced environmental degradation in conjunction with a shifting diet. For example,
the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana survived for many generations with
their traditional diet based on local resources and diverse sources of animal protein, wildgathered plants, and nuts, and experienced very few diet-related diseases. However, their diet
began to shift starting in the 1960’s to being fully dependent on purchased supplies of maize.
By the 1980’s researchers began to see high rates of anemia, parasitism and liver damage, in
part due to the significant diet change, a change which had resulted in a greater dependence on
store-bought foods (Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996). This information illustrates the loss of
diversity in the diet, as well as the loss of food sovereignty for a community that mostly
provided for itself, but became dependent on purchased food supplies. This level of complexity

13

and detail of the local context of diet change would not have been available from a nationallevel survey of trends in diet change.
One example of research which has illustrated the loss of cultural practices related to a
changing diet is in the Inuit communities of the Arctic. Inuit communities of the Arctic region
live a lifestyle very different than that of the average Canadian. However, over time, their
cultural practices have been undergoing significant transition. Borré, an anthropologist who
studied the place of seal meat in the Inuit diet, found out “how deeply connected the
community’s preference for seal meat was to their notions of health, physiology, and cultural
identity” (1991: 50). Seal meat is not simply a food, but is deeply tied in with the community’s
cultural identity. The sharing of seal meat has traditionally been an important cultural practice
that brings families together, and serves as an ecological strategy to maintain seal populations.
However, the Inuit have slowly been losing cultural practices related to food, such as the
sharing of seal meat. Factors that have contributed to the loss of this cultural practice include
the public education system which takes youth away from their homes and does not give time
for families to pass on hunting and meat preparation; the increasing presence of shops to
purchase food supplies; and federal policies that have restricted Inuit hunting practices (Borré
1991).
One area of changing food systems in which the loss of knowledge is palpable is in the
declining practice of seed saving. Seed selection and storage requires an incredible amount of
knowledge about varietal differences, crop diseases, nutrition, and food preparation (Pionetti
2006). Women farmers in the drylands of South India hold a tremendous amount of knowledge
in terms of the types of seeds they save and the reasons for saving them; when and where to

14

plant specific varieties; the nutritional value of different crops; and the qualities that make
certain varieties better for food preparation than others, such as taste and cook time (Pionetti
2006). However, as agricultural systems and rural diets in India change, the reliance on saved
seed and subsistence crops becomes replaced with purchased inputs for commercial crops and
store-bought food supplies (Finnis 2007). Thus, the detailed and specific knowledge on how to
save seeds of diverse subsistence crops may get lost when communities no longer rely on those
crops for food.
Moreover, the ownership of seeds and the means of food production is an integral part
of food sovereignty. One definition of food sovereignty developed by the organization La Via
Campesina is:
The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through
ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food
and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the
heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of market and
corporations… (as cited in Patel 2009: 666)
If people must depend on commercially available inputs in order to grow food, purchased
supplies in order to eat, and transportation systems in order to access basic needs,
communities face the possibility of a loss of food sovereignty. If people are unable to easily
access culturally appropriate foods or healthy foods, either because of policy or cultural
practice that has removed people from their own land, as in the case with many indigenous
communities in the US (Damman et al. 2008), or because healthy foods are too expensive, then
food sovereignty is threatened. Considerations of the health impacts of diet change are
important, but are not separate from or more important than other possible consequences
such as a loss of food sovereignty, loss of cultural practices, and loss of knowledge.

15

Finally, diet change is also gendered, in that women and men often have different diets,
and experience diet change in distinct ways (Hansford 2010). Though scholarship on the
nutrition transition has acknowledged gender, the perspective in the literature on how gender
is related to diet change seems limited to the ways in which women’s rates of obesity are
different than men’s, and how women’s employment outside of the home causes families’ diets
to become less healthy: “Particularly important in the nutrition transition are associated
changes in the roles of women (especially with respect to patterns of time allocation), in
income distribution, and in household food-preparation technology” (Popkin 1993: 143).
However, Hansford, in her study in Brazil, found that a gendered perspective on diet change
and the nutrition transition yields deeper considerations such as, access to different kinds of
food due to household dynamics, differences in physical activity and ability to leave the home,
and biological differences in the storage of body fat (2010). Hansford found that in urban
settings women may be less physically active than men due to their gendered household roles
and limitations on women’s movement outside the home, and that women may reserve
healthier foods for male family members, negatively impacting women’s health more than
men’s as communities transition to the urbanized lifestyle and diet (2010).
The human diet has clearly undergone tremendous change throughout history, and in
fact many changes are considered critical for our evolution as a species (Gordon 1987).
Historically these transitions have been slow, taking place over very long periods of time, such
as the domestication and breeding of wild plant species and the incorporation of these varieties
into the diet over time where the plant was originally domesticated (Katz 1987). However, the

16

pace of dietary change has increased over the last three hundred years globally, with important
health, environmental, and cultural consequences (Popkin 2006).
For example Mead et al. (2010), in their study of changes in food practices and diet of
the Inuit in Nunavut, Canada, found that it was necessary to investigate diet change and the
reasons for those changes in order to more effectively address the increasing prevalence of
chronic disease. Changes in educational systems, transportation, personal preferences, and
access to shops were found to have a tremendous impact on the Inuit diet; this in turn has had
an impact on the community’s health, namely increased nutritional deficiencies and levels of
diet-related chronic disease (Mead et al. 2010). The researchers found that in order to develop
more effective health-related interventions, an understanding of the ways in which the
traditional diet has changed, and the reasons for those changes, were critical. For example,
researchers identified the increasing importance of store-bought food in Inuit communities, yet
also identified cost as a barrier for communities to access healthy food. Thus, increasing access
to healthy foods at local shops would greatly improve the health of Inuit communities who are
increasingly relying on store-bought food (Mead et al. 2010).
A useful framework for understanding diet change is the “Characteristics of the five
patterns of the nutrition transition” that Popkin develops in his work (Popkin 1993; Popkin
2006). Though Popkin’s emphasis in understanding diet change is on developing a nationallevel, and even global, picture of diet change with the goal of addressing the health impacts, he
acknowledges that the nutrition transition is a
complex interplay of changes in patterns of agricultural, health, and socioeconomic
factors…One needs to be concerned with food supply, which relates to agricultural
systems…economic resources, demographics, various cultural and knowledge factors

17

associated with food choice, and also disease patterns, sociological considerations such
as the role of women and family structure (Popkin 2002: 111-112).
Thus, his theory of the five patterns of diet change can also be useful in a study such as this
which identifies the importance of addressing not only health concerns, but also the impacts on
knowledge, culture, sovereignty, and environmental degradation.
Popkin has categorized five patterns of diet change based on a study of changes in diet
in different regions of the world (see Table 2.1). Popkin’s theory on the five patterns of diet
change describes the nutritional status, economy, demographics, and food processing
technology of different societies. Pattern one, “collecting food,” describes hunter-gatherer
societies. These societies maintain a plant-based diet (with lean meat from hunted animals as
well), they experience few nutritional deficiencies, but high rates of infectious disease, yet they
have minimal to no food processing technologies.
Pattern two, “famine,” describes a society that relies more on agriculture and animal
husbandry; cereals are the dominant food and the diet is less varied than hunter-gatherers;
famine and starvation are common; epidemics and nutritional deficiencies exist; and the
population is mostly rural. Pattern three, “receding famine,” describes a society that has begun
to have greater access to fruits and vegetables and animal protein, and relies less on starches
and staples; agricultural inputs such as fertilizer are used and agricultural practices are more
industrialized; women have joined the labor force; famine is less common but infectious
diseases are prevalent; and populations become more urbanized. Pattern four, “degenerative
disease,” describes a society in which animal fat, sugar, and processed foods are regular parts
of the diet; obesity and diet-related diseases are common; populations are more urbanized and
sedentary; and agriculture and food processing are highly industrialized.
18

Table 2.1 Characteristics of the five patterns of the nutrition transition (Popkin 2006: 290)
Pattern 1:
collecting
food

Pattern 2:
famine

Pattern 3:
receding
famine

Pattern 4:
degenerative
disease

Pattern 5:
behavioral
change

Plants, lowfat wild
animals,
varied diet

Cereals
predominant,
diet less
varied

Fewer starchy
staples;
more fruit,
vegetables,
animal protein;
low
variety
continues

More fat
(especially
from animal
products),
sugar,
processed
foods; less
fiber

Robust,
lean
population;
few
nutritional
deficiencies

Children and
women
suffer most
from
low fat
intake,
nutritional
deficiency
diseases
emerge,
stature
declines

Continued
mother/child
nutrition
problems,
many
deficiencies
disappear,
weaning
diseases
emerge,
stature grows

Obesity,
problems for
elderly (bone
health,
etc), many
disabling
conditions

Higher-quality
fats,
reduced
refined
carbohydrates,
more
whole grains,
fruit,
vegetables
Reduction in
body fat
and obesity,
improvement
in bone
health

Huntergatherers

Agriculture,
animal
husbandry,
homemaking
begin; shift
to
monoculture

Second
agricultural
revolution
(crop
rotation,
fertilizer),
Industrial
Revolution,
women join
labor force

Fewer jobs
with heavy
physical
activity,
service sector
and
mechanization
household
technology
revolution

Nutrition
profile
Diet

Nutritional
status

Economy
Jobs

19

Service sector
mechanization
and
industrial
robotization
dominate,
increase in
leisure exercise
offsets
sedentary jobs

Table 2.1 (cont’d)
Household
production

Primitive,
onset of fire

Laborintensive,
primitive
technology
begins

Income
and assets

Subsistence, Subsistence,
primitive
few
stone tools tools

Primitive water
systems,
clay stoves,
cooking
technology
advances
Increases in
income
disparity and
agricultural
tools
industrialization

Household
technology
mechanizes
and
proliferates

Significant
reduction in
food
preparation
costs

Rapid
growth in
income
and income
disparities,
technology
proliferation

Decrease in
income
growth,
increase in
home and
leisure
technologies

Life
expectancy
hits
unique levels
(ages
60–70), huge
decline
and
fluctuations
in
fertility (eg,
postwar
baby boom)

Life expectancy
extends
to ages 70 and
80 yrs,
disability-free
period
increases

Demographic
profile
Mortality
and fertility

Low
fertility,
high
mortality,
low life
expectancy

Age of
Malthus;
high
natural
fertility,
short life
expectancy,
high
infant and
maternal
mortality

Mortality
declines slowly,
then rapidly;
fertility
static, then
declines;
small,
cumulative
population
growth,
which later
explodes

20

Table 2.1 (cont’d)
Morbidity

Much
infectious
disease,
no
epidemics

Age
structure

Young
population

Residency
patterns

Rural, low
density

Epidemics,
endemic
disease
(plague,
smallpox,
polio,
tuberculosis),
deficiency
disease
begins,
starving
common
Young, very
few
elderly

Tuberculosis,
smallpox
infection,
parasitic
disease, polio,
weaning
disease
(diarrhea,
retarded
growth)
expand, later
decline
Chiefly young,
shift to
older
population
begins

Rural, a few
small,
crowded
cities

Chiefly rural,
move to
cities increases,
international
migration
begins,
megacities
develop

Chronic
disease
related
to diet and
pollution
(heart
disease,
cancer),
decline in
infectious
disease
Rapid
decline in
fertility,
rapid
increase in
proportion
of elderly
person
Dispersal of
urban
population
decrease in
rural green
space

Increases in
health
promotion
(preventive
and
therapeutic),
rapid decline in
cardiovascular
disease, slower
change in agespecific
cancer profile
Increases in the
proportion of
elderly
_75 y of age

Lower-density
cities
rejuvenate,
increase in
urbanization of
rural
areas encircling
cities

Food
processing
Numerous
Technologies
Storage
food
create
processes
transforming foods and food
(drying,
technologies constituent
salting) begin,
substitutes
canning
(eg,
and processing
macronutrients)
technologies
emerge,
Table 2.1 Characteristics of the five patterns of the nutrition transition (Popkin 2006: 290)
Nonexistent

Techniques
and
Technologies

Food storage
begins

21

Finally, pattern five, “behavioral change,” describes a society that has, through education and
policy, reduced fat and sugar intake; reduced rates of diet-related disease; increased physical
activity during leisure time, because work is mechanized; and remains highly urbanized (Popkin
1993; Popkin 2002; Popkin 2006).
The patterns are not necessarily meant to describe a linear progression that every
nation or population goes through or will go through, but can help to compare societies, and
can also help to understand the links between factors such as the health, economy, and diet of
a population. The patterns can also serve to predict what types of health issues a population
might face if other aspects of their society are changing in ways that others have before. Thus,
these patterns show that developing countries such as India appear to share some
technological and economic transitions, and changes in terms of food processing, with the US
and other industrialized nations, and therefore may experience similar diet-related diseases.
Understanding the patterns a priori could direct policy and development initiatives to prevent
the types of diet-related diseases many of the industrialized nations now suffer (Popkin 1993;
Popkin 2002; Popkin 2006). At the same time, these patterns must be used cautiously so as to
not assume that all countries will proceed along a similar linear path, that India’s experiences
are similar to countries such as the US, or that the interventions used in the US can and should
be applied to countries such as India. Caution is even more important in situations where
proceeds from such interventions economically benefit colonizer nations.
One of the important aspects of pattern five in Popkin’s conception is that along with
behavior changes in regards to eating habits and physical activity that individuals themselves
undertake, governments are taking action to educate the public, working with the food

22

industry, and creating policy intended to increase health consciousness, as well as access to a
healthier diet. This focus on institutions as agents of intervention corresponds with his focus on
gathering data in the form of national trends. Though an understanding of national trends and
the contribution to federal health policy or development initiatives is critical, it is limited in that
it does not take regional variation, or the possibility for community-level response or individual
agency into account.
According to this framework, developing countries experiencing the nutrition transition
such as India, China, and Brazil seem to be moving from pattern three to pattern four. For
example, as India becomes increasingly urbanized, the diet includes more fruit and vegetable
consumption as indicated in pattern three (Verma, Datta, and Mandal 2007), but is moving
towards greater consumption of fats and sugar as indicated in pattern four (Misra et al. 2011).
Agriculture has become highly industrialized (Kataki 2002), as indicated in pattern three, but
the population is now becoming more urbanized with fewer physical jobs (Misra et al. 2011), as
indicated in pattern four. As the patterns also indicate, in the transition from pattern three to
four, India’s population is indeed experiencing greater rates of diet-related disease (Misra et al.
2011). Thus, there is cause for concern as India undergoes a nutrition transition.
At the same time, it would be difficult to generalize every region or community in a
country, and it is highly likely that within the same country different communities would be
experiencing different patterns. Different regions of India have distinct geographies,
economies, languages, cultures, and foodways (Achaya 1994), so it is highly likely that the
diverse regions will experience diet change differently. Moreover, identifying a pattern is not
sufficient for addressing the complexity and tradeoffs involved in diet change. One must also

23

understand the factors that are affecting those changes and how they vary across space and
time, in order to avoid policy or development initiatives that seek to address a problem with a
solution designed for another context.
Factors that affect diet change have been described in the literature in a wide range of
populations such as indigenous communities, urban middle-class American communities, and
rural poor in developing countries (Caplan 2002; Mead et al. 2010; Popkin 2006). These factors
could either be personal, such as preferences and perceptions, or structural, in terms of policy
or changes in global markets. Structural conditions that affect diet change include
technological shifts in agricultural and food sectors (Popkin 2006); changes in household
income or in the global marketplace (Kearney 2010); greater access to food shops or markets
(Damman et al. 2008); political reasons such as the removal of indigenous communities from
ancestral land (Damman et al. 2008); increased access to media and advertising such as
television (Popkin 2006); and environmental degradation (Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996). These
conditions affect communities in distinct and specific ways, highlighting the need to understand
the “micro-level” of dietary change, as broader global and national data do not necessarily
reflect regional variation (Finnis 2007). Such context-specific research, allowing for an
understanding of a particular region, as well as an understanding of the experiences of subsets
of the population such as women, is difficult to access through data reflecting global or national
trends in consumption patterns.
For example, the study of national trends of diet shift in India does not reflect the great
regional variation in the consumption of coarse cereals (Kumar and Mruthyunjaya 2007), nor
does statistical data allow for a qualitative understanding of the “the physical factors that

24

farmers perceive as affecting crop productivity and viability” and the “the priorities,
preferences, and aspirations” of people themselves (Finnis 2007: 343). Finnis, in her study of
diet change in the Kolli Hills in South India, found that local communities were moving away
from traditional food systems, with corresponding negative health consequences. She
emphasized the importance of understanding the reasons for these changes, from broad-scale
economic changes, to household decision making, to personal preferences and food choices.
Finnis found that the shift in diet away from local millets was related not only to changes in
production systems towards commodity production of cassava, but also related to the lack of
access to millet in the local markets, and the difficulty of purchasing a diverse selection of food
supplies when families had to haul them up steep mountainous paths (2007). Through direct
conversations with individual villagers, Finnis was able to gather these lived experiences to
paint a much more nuanced portrait of the complexity of diet change. Thus, a context-specific
understanding of dietary change, the ways in which a diet changes, as well as the personal and
structural factors that affect those changes, is critical for being able to understand the
transition of specific communities and inform local solutions. In this next section, I review
literature pertaining to agricultural and food system change in India and the Himalayan region.

India and the Central Himalaya
India
The incredible regional variation of traditional agricultural and food systems in India,
having developed over centuries and supported human survival in a vast diversity of

25

geographical and climatic conditions, is also increasingly being replaced with more industrial
foodways. India is currently undergoing a “nutrition transition” — a major shift in diet away
from traditional food systems to industrial ones; and the “double-burden” of increasing rates of
diet-related diseases while millions still experience high rates of hunger and malnutrition (Misra
et al. 2011). For example, the prevalence of overweight/obesity in Indian urban adults has
increased from 13.3% to 37.8% (for males) and 15.6% to 50.3% (for females) from 2001 to
2007; and rates of Type II Diabetes have increased from 4.6% in 2001 to 7.3% in 2008 (Misra et
al. 2011). At the same time, over 20% of urban women and 50% of rural women are considered
underweight (Popkin 2006).
India is also experiencing severe levels of environmental degradation such as soil
erosion, water and air pollution, and the loss of biodiversity related to changes in the shift from
traditional agricultural systems to industrial ones (Shiva 1993). For example, topsoil in 60% of
the geographical area of Haryana, one of the states in which agricultural practices were most
intensified using Green Revolution technologies, is now considered to be degraded due to
water-logging, salinity, and alkalinity (Singh 2000). The technological changes brought about by
the Green Revolution (which began in the 1960’s) led to a shift in agricultural systems from
localized diverse systems to monocultures of rice and wheat, also known as the rice-wheat
cropping system (RWCS) (Kataki 2002). The amount of land cultivated in the RWCS has
increased to an estimated 12 million hectares (Kataki 2002), displacing the production of pulses,
oilseeds, and local vegetables. Not only did the agricultural systems change from diverse
traditional systems to the RWCS, the Indian diet shifted from diverse traditional systems to a
heavy reliance on wheat and rice consumption (Kataki 2002).
26

Furthermore, the accompanying chemical package required to grow the high-yielding
rice and wheat includes chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Years of fertilizer and pesticide use
and intensive cultivation practices have led to soil erosion, water contamination, and loss of
insect biodiversity among many other environmental problems (Kansal, Dhaliwal, and Bajwa
1996; Shiva 1991). Heavy reliance on irrigation has led to declining aquifers and soil salination
(Kansal et al. 1996). Pesticide use has also led to kidney disease, increases in cancer rates, and
a whole host of issues in human health (Abhilash and Singh 2009). In light of these ecological
and health consequences of industrialized agriculture, the traditional agricultural and food
systems of India are increasingly being recognized as potentially important resources in
addressing the negative consequences wrought by reliance on the RWCS (Maikhuri et al. 1999).
Traditional agricultural and food systems in India include a high genetic diversity as well
as a high diversity of different foods such as pearl millet, barley, sorghum, maize, whole wheat;
pulses, local fruits and vegetables; and a wide variety of spices (Misra et al. 2011). Kataki
(2002) found that traditionally throughout India there were at least 30 different cropping
systems much more prevalent before the Green Revolution, such as rice-rice, rice-pulse, and
cereal-oil seed, which provided diverse diets. He also found that in regions of India that
continue to consume their traditional diverse diet such as Mizoram and Meghalaya in the
Northeast, there are lower levels of childhood stunting (deficiency in height for age); while
areas that have shifted to monoculture RWCS experienced a related increase in childhood
stunting and child malnutrition. Interestingly, as India becomes increasingly urbanized, diets
are shifting towards higher levels of sugar, oils, processed and packaged foods (Caplan 2002),
while at the same time, greater amounts of fruits and vegetables (Verma et al. 2007). This shift
27

in diet is certainly positive in some aspects, such as increased fruit and vegetable consumption
and less hunger. However, increased consumption of fats and sugar, coupled with decreasing
levels of physical activity in urban areas, is leading to the “double-burden” – the increase in
diet-related diseases in certain sectors of the population while large percentages of the
population remain hungry (Misra et al. 2011). Misra et al., who cite “globalization” as a driving
force of change in Indian agricultural and food systems, point to “the severing of the link
between diets and local availability of resources and local habits” (2011: 280). They connect
the shift from the traditional diet towards the “globalized” diet to increased rates of such
conditions as diabetes and obesity in an increasingly urbanizing and globalized India (2011).
Diet change and diet-related diseases are not only affecting the increasingly urbanized
populations of India with greater access to the modern globalized diet, but these diet changes
are reaching rural areas (Tripathi and Srivastava 2011). Though there still exists great
heterogeneity in the Indian diet, this heterogeneity is decreasing due to interstate migration, as
well as the return of migrants to their original homes, bringing the desire for the urban diet and
foodstuffs with them (Tripathi and Srivastava 2011). However, national trends of agricultural
and diet change in India do not necessarily reflect regional variation (Kumar and Mruthyunjaya
2007). Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to understand the context of specific
health and ecological issues in a given region.

28

The Central Himalaya
In India, the Himalayan region is unique geographically and culturally. The distinct
Himalayan cultures have developed, in part, due to the topography which has caused mountain
communities to be historically more isolated than the plains areas to the south (Joshi and Singh
2010). However, due to the construction of paved roads beginning in the 1960’s throughout
the Himalayan region (Kreutzmann 1991), and the introduction of media such as television,
mountain areas are more connected to mainstream Indian society and the global society than
ever before (Joshi and Singh 2010). Moreover, cultural exchange is taking place, as the Indian
Himalaya are an important tourist destination for Indian and international travelers alike; and
as mountain people migrate to the plains and other urban centers in search of employment,
returning to their mountain villages bringing new cultures home (Joshi and Singh 2010).
In the context of broader cultural changes, traditional Himalayan agricultural and food
systems are transforming rapidly. Such changes bring both negative and positive consequences
to mountain communities. However, there is much evidence that traditional agricultural and
food systems are eroding, with some negative ecological and health consequences for local
communities (Nautiyal and Kaechele 2007; Negi et al. 2009; Subeti 2010). For example, as
monoculture apple production increases, terraces that were previously used for a wide
diversity of traditional crops to be consumed locally are converted to commercial apple
production. The apple varieties produced are less diverse, dependent on chemical inputs, and
developed for export markets. This causes local people to be more dependent on purchased
food supplies (Negi et al. 2009). Negi et al. found that in apple producing areas, there was a

29

decrease in the planting of traditional trees which had a variety of uses from fodder for cattle to
food and fuel wood, which, in turn, placed greater pressure on forest resources (2009).
The Himalaya are known for a high biological diversity of “underexploited” crops
(Maikhuri, Nautiyal, and Khali 1991) as well as wild plants (Sundriyal and Sundriyal 2001). Food
plants include a wide array of traditional varieties of millets, barley, rice, sorghum, and wheat
(Maikhuri et al. 1999), and a tremendous variety of wild greens and fruits (Sundriyal and
Sundriyal 2001). Diversity also extends to the cropping systems themselves (Negi et al. 2009),
including a well-known traditional cropping system called baranaja — the sowing of twelve
different crops together at the same time (Sati 2005b). Ninety percent of the cultivated areas
in the central Himalaya have traditionally been devoted to subsistence crops grown for
domestic market or local consumption, and cultivation has been closely linked with other
subsistence activities which “form an integrated production system for sustainable livelihoods”
(Negi et al. 2009: 313), demonstrating the direct relationship between the traditional
agricultural systems and diet. Traditional Himalayan farming systems, and therefore food
systems, are highly diverse, dependent on local resources and knowledge bases, and locally
developed technologies (Negi et al. 2009). Moreover, many of the traditional foods and crops
are highly nutritious and are also used for medicinal purposes (Dangwal et al. 2007; Maikhuri et
al. 1991). However, research over the last 20 years has consistently documented a decline in
traditional agricultural practices and systems; and a loss of traditional agricultural knowledge
and crop diversity (Maikhuri et al. 1996; Maikhuri et al. 1999; Nautiyal and Kaechele 2007;
Saxena, Maikhuri, and Rao 2005). From 1970 to 1990 the percentage of area under cultivation
of several important traditional crops declined from 60-80% due to changes in cropping
30

systems, environmental degradation, migration, and cultural shifts (Maikhuri et al. 1991).
Though this research points to critical issues in agricultural systems change, research on food
systems change in the Himalaya is limited. Furthering this research will allow agricultural
development and policy initiatives to take into account the specific context of food systems
change, and to be more effective in affecting the food practices of mountain communities.
Furthermore, research on agricultural and food systems change in the Himalaya requires
a gendered perspective. Traditional farming systems in the Himalaya rely primarily on women’s
labor (Agarwal 2002). Though men are responsible for building the terrace walls and plowing
the fields, women perform all other tasks including sowing seeds, pulling weeds, pest control,
adding manure, harvesting, and preparing food (Mukherjee 1999; Agarwal 2002). This trend
has only increased, especially in lower and middle elevations, due to high male outmigration in
search of employment in urban centers (Mukherjee 1999). Women not only cultivate the
traditional crops and prepare the food, but also hold a tremendous amount of ecological and
agricultural knowledge, gained through their day-to-day tasks, and passed down from
generation to generation (Agarwal 2002; Howard 2003; Shiva 1993). Women also experience
environmental degradation in different ways than men due to their gendered work roles
(Agarwal 1992), and experience diet change differently than men (Hansford 2010). Thus,
studying diet change in the Himalaya must include a gendered perspective in order to account
for the different ways that men and women experience agricultural and food systems change.
As Caplan (2002), Finnis (2007), and Hansford (2010) found, speaking directly with
individuals undergoing change can reveal important information about diet change, and the
personal and structural factors affecting the changes. Individual experiences can provide rich
31

and detailed information about the specific ways in which the diet is changing, such as the
types of foods eaten each day; the reasons individuals choose to eat the way they do; the
consequences of diet change; and the constraints, either at a household or systemic level that
prevent people from consuming their preferred diet. For example, Caplan (2002) spoke with
middle-class women in Madras in 1970 and then again in 1990 about their families’ diet as well
as the changes in the food system that the women experienced. The women revealed that
important factors such as television commercials, the convenience of store-bought food, the
increase in the presence of restaurants, and the use of electrical appliances, greatly affected a
shift towards a diet higher in salt, sugar, and fat, and away from the traditional south Indian
foods the women had been preparing previously.
The rapid change in traditional agricultural systems in the hills could indicate a
corresponding diet change, since the hill communities have historically depended on their own
food system for survival. However, much of the research on the changes in agricultural systems
in the Himalaya has focused on changes to crop varieties, cropping systems, and changes to
land use, and not on the changes in consumption patterns of hill people or the complex,
context-specific reasons for those changes. Given the documented health benefits of many of
the traditional Himalayan crops, and the current situation of increasing diet-related diseases in
India related to the industrial diet, it is important to understand the ways in which the diet of
hill communities is changing, the reasons for the changes, and negative consequences of the
changes. This approach is also in keeping with research on understanding agriculture and food
as a system, and not as discreet sectors, where changes to one part of the system likely indicate
changes in other parts (Wright 1999). Moreover, the actual experiences of individuals,

32

particularly the elder generation, are important to understand since the elders carry
experiential knowledge of the traditional foodways. Elder women in the central Himalaya are to
be considered particularly knowledgeable since they consumed the traditional diet exclusively
until recently, and they have been primarily responsible for agricultural and food preparation
tasks in hill communities. This research can contribute directly to policy, development
initiatives, and educational programs aiming to benefit the health and sustainability of
mountain peoples in the central Himalaya.

33

3. SITE DESCRIPTION:
Rudraprayag District, Uttarakhand, India

The state of Uttarakhand lies in the northern part of India and borders the Indian states
of Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, as well as Nepal and Tibet (See Figure 3.1).
Uttarakhand (also referred to as Uttaranchal) was formed in 2000 as the 27th state of India, and
is comprised of 13 districts (Sati 2005a). Though there are some sloping plains, the vast
majority (90%) of the state is hilly to mountainous (see Figure 3.2), with lower altitudes starting
at 2,000 feet, all the way to high snow-covered peaks, some with altitudes greater than 20,000
feet. Over 60% of the land is covered in forest, and the terrain is rugged and rocky (Maikhuri et
al. 2009; Sati 2005a). The weather is relatively unpredictable as in many mountainous regions,
and different weather conditions can occur within short ranges of time in a given area, being
stormy and windy at one moment, and breaking into clear sunshine in the next. Different
weather conditions can also be experienced in two nearby places at the same time because of
geographical and topographical differences (Capila 2002). Two of India’s most important rivers
both for water and for their sacredness, the Ganga and the Yamuna, start in the glaciers of
Uttarakhand (Maikhuri et al. 2009).

34

Figure 3.1. Map of India. The state of Uttarakhand borders Nepal and Tibet as well as
the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana. (For interpretation
of the references to color in this and all other figures, the reader is referred to the
electronic version of this thesis).

35

The state is also home to some of the country’s most sacred religious pilgrimage sites
including Kedarnath (considered one of the holiest Hindu temples), as well as forest preserves
such as the Jim Corbett National Park, heavily visited during the summer travel months by both
Indian and international travelers. Much of the landscape is associated with Hindu mythology
and there are many sacred sites such as temples. Many residents consider the mountains,
forests, streams, and other aspects of the land to be sacred as well (Capila 2002).
Uttarakhand, as much of the Himalayan region, is home to an incredible diversity of
plant and animal species, microclimates, crops and cropping systems, terrain, and human
cultures (Saxena et al. 2005). The state is still rural, with a population of 6.0 million (density of
94.4 persons per square kilometer), and agriculture is the main occupation in the region, with
75% of the population engaged in agricultural work (Sati 2005b). The traditional agricultural
system is characterized by mixed planting systems; rich crop biodiversity; reliance on human
hand labor, primarily women’s labor due to high male outmigration; terraced fields (see Figure
3.3); reliance on cattle and other livestock for manure and labor; low chemical input and
relatively low productivity; and is primarily rain-fed (Chandra et al. 2011). This system is in
stark contrast to plains regions such as Punjab and Haryana where the RWCS is the norm and
agriculture is highly mechanized (Kataki 2002). The high agricultural biodiversity characteristic
of traditional agricultural systems in Uttarakhand is related to the diversity of climates, soils and
wild biodiversity found in the region, but is also maintained and enhanced by cultural beliefs
and practices, such as festivals and traditional food preparations. Thus, agricultural systems
and cultural practices are very closely related in Uttarakhand (Nautiyal et al. 2008).

36

Figure 3.2. The middle hills in Rudraprayag District - rugged terrain,
agricultural terraces, sparsely laid out houses and villages, and a
few roads.

Figure 3.3. Terraced agricultural fields on a steep hillside. All crops in the hills
are grown on terraces such as these, some steeper than others. Note the neat
terraces, all shaped by hand and supported by hand-built stone walls.
37

The main seasons in the hills are winter (October – February), spring/summer (April –
June), and rainy season (July-September), Monsoon rains play a critical role in this rain-fed
system, more than half of which falls during the months of July and August, thus, the majority
of planting in the warmer months begins in June (Nautiyal and Kaechele 2007). Rabi, or rainy
season, crops include wheat, barley, mustard, lentils, and peas; and kharif, or dry season, crops
include rice, millet, and maize (Maikhuri et al. 2001). The traditional agricultural system has
historically relied upon a wide variety of traditional crops and their varieties such as millet,
amaranth, rice, kidney beans, and lentils. However, recent research has shown that not only is
crop diversity declining, but soil erosion and other ecological degradation has been linked to
newer, more intensive agricultural practices (e.g. monoculture and chemical inputs) (Maikhuri
et al. 2001; Nautiyal and Kaechele 2007; Negi et al. 2009; Saxena et al. 2005).
Though subsistence agriculture is the main occupation of the people, and though the
state is very rich in biodiversity and natural resources and maintains a GDP higher than the
national average, in 2001 70% of the land holdings were considered marginal in size, and 36%
of families were considered to be living below the poverty line (Maikhuri et al. 2009). Part of
the reason for the continued poverty of a relatively high percentage of the population is due to
the difficulty of developing industry in the rugged terrain (Sati 2005a). Currently, the only
relatively well-developed source of income in the hills is tourism-related work (Rasmussen and
Parvez 2002).
The state of Uttarakhand is culturally divided into two main regions, Garhwal and
Kumaon. Garhwal, where this study was conducted, is the region covering the western half of
the state including the Rudraprayag, (Pauri) Garhwal, Tehri Garhwal, Hardwar, Dehradun, and

38

Uttarkashi districts (see Figure 3.4). As Rudraprayag district is in Garhwal, all participants in this
study spoke Garhwali as their first language, and identified as Garhwali culturally. Garhwali
culture includes distinct songs, dances, folklore, and foods, aside from the local language
(written and spoken). Oral history and other oral traditions, such as folk songs, are extremely
important not only for the transmission of knowledge, but for self-expression, community
gatherings, and cultural reproduction (Capila 2002).
Most Garhwalis are Hindu, though there is a significant population of Muslims and Sikhs,
as well as small populations of Christians, Buddhists, and Jains (Directorate of Economics and
Statistics 2009). Three main social groups make up the Garhwali population: Kols, who are
believed to be the original inhabitants of the region, are generally considered lower caste and
are often artisans, craftspeople, carpenters, and do not own much land. Rajputs are people
who have immigrated to the region from adjoining states, or who escaped to the mountains
during Mughal Rule (1500 AD-1800 AD). Most of the participants in this study considered
themselves Rajputs and believed they were originally from the state of Rajasthan. Rajputs
make up the majority of the Garhwali population and also tend to own land. The third group,
Brahmins, are believed to have migrated from other states for pilgrimage and eventually settled
(Capila 2002).
Rudraprayag is a mountainous district crisscrossed by tributaries of the Alaknanda and
Mandakini rivers, which join and eventually form the Ganga in Devprayag (HIMJKAS 2002).
There are a total of 658 villages in the district, and village size averages 326 residents (HIMJKAS
2002). Some villages are separated from other villages by valleys or forested land and are

39

relatively isolated, while other villages are closely clustered together and appear to be one
large village, but are actually separate entities. Homes are generally built close to water
sources with larger villages situated on flatter ground closer to the larger rivers, and sparser
constructions on the hillsides in proximity to natural springs or streams (Capila 2002).

Figure 3.4. Map of the state of Uttarakhand. It is divided into 13 districts. Research for
this study was carried out in Rudraprayag district. Garhwal is a region referring to the
western half of the state including Rudraprayag, (Pauri) Garhwal, Tehri Garhwal, Hardwar,
Dehradun, and Uttarkashi. Garhwal is a region in which people identify as Garhwali
culturally and speak the Garhwali language.

40

The villages in which I carried out field research are located in what are considered
middle elevations, which range from 3000 to 6000 feet (Maikhuri et al. 2001). They are
clustered in three main areas along major paved roads that lead to two important pilgrimage
sites, Kedarnath and Badrinath (see Figure 3.5). Being on these major roads or within ten
kilometers of them means that there is a significant amount of tourist traffic during the summer
months. There are also other tourist areas such as forest preserves that draw visitors
throughout the year on these same roads. The proximity to the roads also allows these villages
easier access to market centers and public transportation, as well as greater contact with
tourists.
The first area of villages visited in this study was within ten kilometers of Saari Village (a
tourist destination with a small lake and a Hindu temple). Several of the villages were clustered
together along the main road, appearing to be one large village, while other villages were a few
kilometers further, on the other side of the valley. There were a few small markets along the
main road in this area owned by local families which carried items such as tomatoes, onions,
eggs, candy, and soft drinks. These villages were also only ten kilometers southeast of
Ukhimath, a relatively large marketing town with an outdoor produce market, a few guest
houses, schools, and electronics stores.

41

Figure 3.5. Rudraprayag District Map.
This is the site of the first set of interviews near Saari village as well as the third
focus group, which took place in Saari village itself.
This is the site of the second set of interviews and the first two focus groups,
Kandara village.
This is the site of the final two interviews, in Rounlenk (Raun).
This arrow denotes the route to Badrinath, a very important sacred site.
Badrinath is another 100 kilometers slightly east and mostly north of Gopeshwar.
42

The second field site was a larger village called Kandara. This village was considerably
larger than the separate villages near Saari. Kandara is approximately 20 very winding
kilometers from Chandrapuri, which is also a larger marketing town (not as large as Ukhimath),
and is along the main paved road. The road to Kandara from Chandrapuri is mostly paved and
is crossed by small streams without bridges. Villagers previously used to walk these distances
in order to travel, but now there are regular vans which leave Chandrapuri for the surrounding
villages throughout the day. During the rainy season, however, the roads are highly
unpredictable as landslides are quite common. During my two months of fieldwork, I witnessed
many landslides and destroyed roads which either led to traffic delays or meant that van drivers
would drive as far as possible and leave passengers at a site where the road was either covered
in rocks and soil, or was washed away. From that point, passengers could either continue
walking to their destination, or another van would be waiting on the other side of the impasse
to pick them up. Within Kandara village itself, because it was quite large, there were several
medical shops, small food markets, and a tailor, whereas the Saari village area did not have as
many shops within walking distance of the village homes.
The third study area was Rounlenk village, approximately 20 kilometers northeast of
Ukhimath. This route is traveled by vans regularly throughout the day and can take an hour.
However, during my visit my guide and I traveled for four hours in order to reach his home in
Rounlenk because of landslides and road destruction due to the monsoon rains. Rounlenk is
smaller than Kandara village and is relatively isolated compared to the cluster of villages in the
Saari area. There are several medical and food shops within the village itself, however.

43

One common practice in many of these villages is that when families buy large
quantities of rice, flour, oil, or other heavy supplies (such as 50kg bags) from Ukhimath or
Chandrapuri, several families from the same village or nearby village hire a jeep together and
load the supplies onto the roof, while passengers ride on the inside. The jeep then drops off
supplies and passengers at their respective homes for an agreed upon fee. Driving jeeps and
vans, running markets and shops, and working in guest houses or as tour guides are some of
the newer job opportunities for young men who stay in the region.
Since all of the land in the district is relatively mountainous, the homes are built into the
hillsides, and the fields are all terraced. Some terraces are very narrow, and on less steep
inclines the terraces are wider. Roads, markets, medical shops, and other “developments” are
relatively recent in these villages — road construction began in the 1960’s, and other markets
and shops were built after that time. Thus, the older generation remembers the village as it
was, without the possibility for transportation by motor vehicle, before medical shops and the
presence of western-trained doctors. The older generation also remembers the traditional
ways of eating before the possibility of purchasing food supplies from the markets. Elder
women carry a tremendous amount of knowledge in regards to traditional agricultural and food
systems, as they have been chiefly responsible for the cultivation and preparation of food in
Garhwali families.

44

4. METHODS

This study employed two qualitative methods – semi-structured interviews and focus
groups. Data was gathered during the months of June and July, 2011. Fourteen interviews
were conducted in total — thirteen with women ages 60-80, and one with a male traditional
healer in his 60’s. Three focus groups were conducted with groups of women of ages ranging
from 24—72, and the groups had between seven and sixteen participants. The interviews and
focus groups were carried out in several villages of the middle hills in the Rudraprayag district,
Uttarakhand, India. Though I did not formally employ participant observation as a method,
staying in families’ homes, working in the gardens with women, and spending two months in
the region allowed for some more informal observations that complement the data collected
through typical interviewer/interviewee interaction.
Qualitative methods were chosen for this study because they allow the researcher to
reach the insider’s or emic perspective, and help the researcher to understand the meanings
that are attributed by the insiders to behaviors, objects, or interactions. These methods allow
for themes or patterns to emerge based on the respondent’s experience, themes that the
researcher may not be able to anticipate based on personal experience or a study of the
literature (Patton 2002). The respondents were chosen purposefully (as opposed to randomly)
in order to more deeply understand the experience and perspective of elder women in the
middle hills of Uttarakhand in regards to diet change, traditional food systems, and health.
These respondents have life experience and knowledge about the topic of interest because as
elders they are experiencing major changes to the Himalayan environment, culture, and

45

traditional agricultural and food systems in their lifetime. Younger generations have been
exposed to aspects of the modern food system since their own childhood. Thus, elders have
lived and are living significant changes to the traditional foodways in the hills. Moreover, as
women, they have been primarily responsible for the cultivation and preparation of traditional
crops and foods (Agarwal 2002). These experiences are important for understanding patterns
that emerge (Hesse-Biber and Leavey 2006), but can also be used for understanding the
meaning of quantitative results, or to guide a quantitative study (Chung 2000). Qualitative
methods are particularly useful in subject areas about which little is known, such as the
villagers’ reasons for choosing the foods they eat; for understanding the experiences of
marginalized populations, such as elder women in the Himalaya; and to document a process,
such as diet change (LeCompte and Schensul 1999).
The interviews were “cultural,” aiming to understand the day-to-day experiences of the
respondents, letting the respondents express what is important to them (Rubin and Rubin
2005) within the context of talking about diet change and health. This was facilitated via semistructured interviews which allowed the respondents space to share what they found relevant
while speaking about the topic of the study. The question set that was developed (see
Appendix A) helped to guide the conversation toward the topics of interest in this study, yet
were left open to allow themes and patterns to emerge that could not have been anticipated by
the researcher. Interviews provided a forum for drawing out the kind of depth and detail which
actually illustrated changes to a person’s behavior and attitudes, such as what types of food
they prepare, how often, and with whom; how these behaviors have changed over time; as well
as feelings about these processes.

46

Focus groups are a qualitative method which can be used to develop a general
understanding of the subject population, in this case elder women, in order to construct more
appropriate interview questions. They can also allow participants to feel more comfortable
than they may feel in a one-on-one interview, and, therefore, share different types of
information. The group discussions can also reveal participant consensus or disagreement
about particular topics (Krueger and Casey 2000). In this study, focus groups were used in
order to create a space which would allow participants to share information they might not
have thought of in an interview – several of my interview questions required women to recall
their daily diet of fifty years back, and being with other women of the same generation allowed
for greater recall. The focus groups also served as a way to check for the level of consensus on
certain topics, such as the perceptions of the health benefits of traditional crops and the level
of drudgery women have experienced in the region over time.
These qualitative methods were employed in order to gain an understanding of the
knowledge and experiences that elder women in Rudraprayag villages hold in regards to diet
change and the health benefits of the traditional diet. Though significant research is taking
place on the issues of agricultural change and traditional crops in the Himalayan region, most
studies do not specifically undertake interviews with women, though the researchers may
acknowledge that women are significant knowledge holders. Moreover, the focus on women’s
everyday lives and on women’s unique knowledge and perspective that comes from their
distinctive experiences and gender roles can lead to “empirically more accurate descriptions
and theoretically richer explanations” (Harding 2001: 145) in regards to diet change and the
health of the traditional diet, according to feminist standpoint perspective.

47

Population
All women who participated in focus groups and interviews were born and raised in the
middle hills of the Himalaya (3,000-6,000 ft. altitude) in the state of Uttarakhand, Rudraprayag
district. Some were interviewed in their birth village and others were interviewed in their
husband’s birth village where they moved after marriage. All women interviewed spoke
Garhwali, a language specific to a region of the Himalaya known as Garhwal, which includes
Rudraprayag, Tehri and Pauri Garhwal, Hardwar, Dehradun, and Uttarkashi districts in the state
of Uttarakhand (Figure 3.4). Though the language is also derived from Sanskrit as Hindi is, they
are not similar enough to be understood without learning the other language. Some of the
younger women spoke Hindi due to schooling, and most, including elder women, understood it
well. None spoke or understood English. All of the women gave their names as a first name
followed by Devi, which refers to the female aspect of the divine. It is not a last name or family
name but seemed to be a general term for women in the villages I visited. The first names used
in this study are pseudonyms.
The women followed a similar daily routine which starts at dawn. The first task, after
having tea, is milking the cows, followed by collecting grass for the cows from the forest or
fields. Then women generally return home to make and eat breakfast, after which they go out
to work in the fields. In the afternoon they return to make and eat lunch and rest for a short
time, returning to the fields for several more hours. Finally, they go to the forest or the fields to
cut grass for the cows again in the evening, and return home to make and eat dinner. Other
tasks they engage in on a daily basis are caring for children, washing clothes and dishes, and
cleaning the home area (sweeping, etc). Gathering fire wood is also an important task, but not

48

necessarily carried out daily. The level of intensity of the work differed based on age, the
presence of other members of the household able to carry out tasks, and income level. Elder
women ages 60-80 were the target population for interviews and focus groups. Interviewees
generally fell into this age category, but focus group participants were mixed, ages 24-72, with
the majority of women falling into the age range of 40-60. Though still involved in daily farm
and home tasks, elder women were easier to find at home. However, in some cases, interviews
were carried out in the terrace fields as women worked.

Data Collection Sequence
The first set of data I collected was a series of nine interviews with women from several
small villages in the Saari area of the Rudraprayag district, 12 kilometers from one of the larger
towns in the district, Ukhimath (see Figure 3.5). This area was chosen because many families
continue with traditional agricultural and food practices, yet due to the high tourist traffic and
the recent road construction, they have experienced many changes in their culture, lifestyle,
agricultural practices, and diet. Moreover, the NGO I worked with has a long-standing
partnership with the translator who assisted with this set of interviews. This translator was
born and raised in the study area, and though male, his history in the village allowed for a level
of comfort and familiarity with the village women during the interviews. Many elder villagers,
particularly women, have not received a formal education and are not literate. Thus, a
foreigner coming in and asking questions can be intimidating and can cause the participants to
be less open. Having a translator from the area with a long-standing commitment to the

49

community and long-standing familial relationships helped establish a sense of informality,
while still allowing for the sharing of detail and depth of information.
This set of interviews was conducted over a period of two weeks in which I stayed in the
home of the translator’s family. Each morning, I participated in farm activities such as cutting
grass for the cows, weeding garden plots, harvesting crops, planting seeds, and watering.
These mornings served as informal observation sessions, as I watched my host family as well as
neighboring families at work. After morning work and breakfast, my translator and I set off to
meet with elder women, either his relatives, neighbors, or other community members such as
midwives. The interviews were not scheduled, but were set up as informal visits in which we
would arrive at the house at a time when we thought women would be a little less busy (as
they are always busy). We would be served tea and my translator would introduce me as a
friend and a student from the US who is interested in agriculture. We would engage in light
conversation over tea and after a few minutes I would introduce my research and my study (see
consent script, Appendix C) and ask if they were willing to answer a few questions. The first
few interviews were used to develop a question set (see Appendix A) which was used
throughout the remainder of the study. I audio recorded the conversation with participant
permission, when possible.
The second set of three interviews was conducted in Kandara village (see Figure 3.5) of
the Rudraprayag district over the course of five days. This location was chosen for similar
reasons as the Saari area – I had connections through the NGO, and it is also an area which is
undergoing change due to road construction. Though Kandara is not a touristic village, it is only
10 kilometers off the route to Badrinath and Kedarnath. In Kandara I was assisted by a woman

50

who is a community leader in her village. She was the entry point for the interviews, while two
female students from a local university, both from Garhwali speaking families, helped with
translation. Three interviews were conducted in Kandara village as well as two focus groups.
The interviews were also not formally scheduled, but were arranged as we met women along
our walks as our guide led us through the village. The interviews were also informal in the
sense that we would begin with light conversation over tea, and then when we felt that
participants were comfortable with our presence, we introduced the study and began the
questions. These interviews were not audio recorded.
The final two interviews took place over the course of three days in Rounlenk village,
ten kilometers from Ukhimath village (see Figure 3.5). Again this village was chosen due to the
connection with the NGO and because my guide in this village was a traditional healer
interested in sharing his knowledge with me and showing me his village. In the first interview I
spoke with a couple in their 60s, and the second was with the guide himself, who also served as
my translator in this village. This interview was conducted due to the fact that this healer held
significant knowledge of the health benefits of traditional foods.
The first two focus groups conducted in this study both took place in Kandara village and
were also arranged by my guide. As mentioned above, she is a community leader and also
participates in women’s groups in the village. Thus, through one phone call she arranged for
some members from the women’s group to meet in a local home within an hour of her call. We
arrived and as we waited more and more women began to arrive. The group had 16
participants, ranging in age from 29-72. The second group was also arranged by our guide
making a few phone calls and asking some friends, neighbors, and elders to join us for a

51

conversation. This group had seven participants of ages 30-70. Both of the focus groups were
audio recorded.

Interview #

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

Interviewee(s):
Pseudonyms, Gender,
and Ages
Anjali Devi, F, 70
Amita Devi, F, 70
Bairavi Devi, F, 80
Chanda Devi, F, 50
Divya Devi, F, 60
Eka Devi, F, 65
Eesha Devi, F, 70
Gauri Devi, F, 65
Hasna Devi, F, 68
Indu Devi, F, 81
Janki Devi, F, 75
Jaya Devi, F, 73
Kavita Devi, F, 70
Lalita Devi, F, 72
Madhu Devi, F, 73
Narenderji, M, 62
Oma Devi, F, 65

Location

Daida Village
Daida Village
Daida Village
Rodu Village
Gwar Village
Gunda Gwar Village
Gunda Gwar Village
Ussara Village
Kardhar Village
Kandara Village
Kandara Village
Kandara Village
Rounlenk Village
Rounlenk Village

TABLE 4.1. Interview Profiles. Interviewees in all cases but one were female;
and in all cases but one fell into the target age range of 60-80. These first nine
interviews took place within ten kilometers of Saari village, another tourist
site in the region.

The third and final focus group took place in the Saari area, the area of the first set of
interviews. My first host family contacted a small group of women in Saari village, who were
also involved in a regular women’s temple group. The group met with us in the home of one of
the women. The two female university students who also translated the interviews and focus
groups in Kandara village assisted as translators for this focus group. This group was slightly

52

more formal in the beginning because we did not arrive with a local guide, but eventually
became comfortable. The ages of the participants ranged from 24-52 and several small
children were also present. In this group, as in the first focus group in Kandara village, the
eldest women participated the most. In the second group in Kandara village all participants
shared more equally.

Focus Group #
1

# of Participants
Present
16

2

7

3

7

Gender and Ages

Location

All Female; ages: 72,
63 55, 54, 54, 52, 49,
49, 42, 41, 41, 40, 36,
36, 29, 29
All Female; ages: 70,
50, 51, 50, 49, 32, 30
All Female; ages: 52,
50, 45, 45, 45, 35, 24

Kandara

Kandara
Saari

TABLE 4.2. Focus Group Profiles. The focus groups included women of a wide age range, and
were generally younger than the target population of this study. However, elder women in at
least two of the groups participated more than younger women.

Interviews and focus groups lasted anywhere from a half hour to an hour. After each
interview and focus group I typed my notes and I debriefed with my translators about the
information we received, attempting to record any pieces of information that they received and
perhaps had not translated. I also wrote memos of any themes that were emerging, as well as
refined the question set throughout the data collection period. After completing the first nine
interviews I sat with my translator and he re-translated each recorded interview line by line.
The three interviews carried out in Kandara and the two in Rounlenk were not recorded.

53

One important note is that most of the interviews were not one-on-one. Villagers in
Rudraprayag district live in joint families and in some cases very close to their neighbors. Thus,
in almost all interviews, other family members were present and were either in and out of the
conversation, or participated throughout. I attempted to direct my questions at the target
population of this study, elder women ages 60-80, in any situation. In a few of the interviews
two women were present who fit the target population. In most cases I was able to direct my
questions to the elder woman/women present and other family members listened and
contributed occasionally. In one case, I asked a woman to sit closer to me and told her husband
that though I was interested in hearing what he had to say, I needed to speak to his wife. He
understood, let her speak, and eventually left the conversation. The fact that in most
interviews several family members were also present aside from the target population raises
concerns that an interviewee’s response would be modified by the presence of others. It is
possible that a respondent did not reveal the extent to which she experienced difficulty as a
woman in the presence of her husband, or that she did not go into great detail about the past
due to the presence of younger family members. However, I did not feel it would be culturally
appropriate to ask an elder woman to leave the group situation in order to have a one-on-one
conversation with me, especially because the subject matter was not highly sensitive. Though
several interviews were one-on-one, that was circumstantial – no one else happened to be
present at the moment of the interviews. However, asking a woman to sit separately for the
interview while she was already seated with her family members would have created a level of
formality that would have actually taken away from the level of comfort that I sought to
establish.

54

Analysis
The data collections were analyzed using emergent themes, codes, and summary
statements. These summary statements were considered the main findings of the study which
are discussed in the Results section, where direct quotes and other direct references to data
were used to support the main findings.
Data for this study are text and recordings, and include notes from interviews that were
not recorded; translation notes from recorded interviews (where possible); notes from focus
groups; memos; notes on observations; notes from other informal conversations; and the
recordings of interviews and focus groups. A list of themes was developed based on repeated
readings of the texts and listening to the recordings. These themes were used to develop codes
which were then applied directly to the text of the data collections (See Table 4.3 below for
examples of codes). For example, in the data, wild-gathered green leaves emerged as an
important food since it was mentioned in almost all interviews and focus groups. A code was
developed to sort data that referred to changes in the use of green leaves in the diet (DIETGREENS), and to sort data that contained participant knowledge or perceptions of the health
benefits of wild-gathered green leaves (HEALTH-GREENS). Coding the data for these themes,
sorting the coded data, and summarizing the coded sections led to a finding that the use of
wild-gathered green leaves has declined in the diet, and that the leaves are considered highly
nutritious. This method of analysis was applied to the entire data collection and has been used
to develop the main findings of this study.

55

CODE

DEFINITION

DIET-GREENS

The use of
wild/gathered green
leaves in the diet;
changes over time

DIET-GRAINS

CHG-MARKET

HEALTH-HOME

HOW TO APPLY

Apply to responses
which describe the
use of green leaves in
the diet and changes
to the usage over
time
The types of grains
Apply to responses
grown and/or used in describing the
the diet; changes over cultivation and/or use
time
of grain including
millets, rice, wheat,
etc in the diet and
changes over time
Use of market or
Apply to responses
shops to purchase
describing the
food supplies
changes associated
with the diet due to
access to market
The perception of the Apply to responses
healthfulness of food describing where the
depending on
food is grown or
whether food is
purchased and how
homegrown or store
that affects the
bought
quality or
healthfulness of the
food

EXAMPLE FROM
DATA
No longer gather as
much kandali (nettle)

Loss of old varieties of
rice such as medicinal
black rice

Purchasing and eating
packaged products
such as Maggi (dry
noodles with flavor
packet)
Homegrown grain
fresher/healthier;
Public Distribution
System (PDS) grain
sits for very long
periods of time and is
less healthy

TABLE 4.3. Samples of Codes Used in Data Analysis. These codes were applied to the text of
the data using the abbreviation in the first column and following the rule in the third column.
Coded sections of data, such as in the fourth column, were then sorted and summarized in
order to generate summary statements. These statements were considered the main findings
of the study.

Validity
In the first series of interviews my translator was male, and therefore, in a study
attempting to document women’s knowledge, this raises significant validity concerns. Though
he was a unique man in that he participated in “women’s” work such as milking the cows,
56

cutting grass, planting seeds, and pulling weeds, which most men would not do, he was still
raised into the patriarchal culture of the villages. Thus, it is possible that women participating
in the study were not able to share their concerns fully with a man present; or that the way in
which he asked questions or translated their responses did not pick up on experiences that a
female translator would have interpreted differently.
Secondly, this study has a significant “roadside bias” where “most learning about rural
conditions is mediated by vehicles” (Chambers 1983: 13) and communities further from the
road are not observed or studied. All interview and focus group participants in this study lived
within two kilometers of motor roads. Though road construction in the Himalaya has increased
significantly since the 1960s (Kreutzmann 1991), many villages in Rudraprayag district and the
Himalaya as a whole are still far from roads. Thus the experience of villagers not living near
roads is not represented and could be significantly different.
Finally, as a researcher in the Rudraprayag district I was an outsider. I am not a native
Garhwali speaker, nor am I an Indian citizen. Thus, I truly entered the work as a foreigner,
though of Indian ancestry. The level of depth of a translated study must necessarily be less
than a study conducted in a language one speaks fluently. I am also an educated American and
therefore perceived to be “modern” and “urban” by the villagers, so they may have
experienced some level of timidity, or may not have completely trusted my intentions as an
outsider. They could have also felt that I would not fully understand their experience. This
could have affected their level of openness as well as the types of information they shared.

57

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results of this study are organized into three sections – changes to the hill diet,
women’s experiences and views of the traditional diet, and structural conditions related to diet
change. The section which describes the changes in the hill diet is organized by the types of
foods found in the diet. The extent to which traditional foods were eaten in the past, the ways
they were prepared, and how their place in the diet has changed is described, as well as newer
patterns in the diet. The second section will discuss women’s experiences and views of the
traditional diet, including health, hunger, and the ways in which women’s diets differ from
men’s. The third section will discuss structural conditions that are related to diet change, such
as changing ecological conditions and the construction of roads, which affect food availability
and crop productivity. The specific changes in the diet, the experiences of the traditional diet,
and the structural conditions taken together provide a greater understanding for the specific
context of diet change in the study area, and about the level of risk Himalayan communities
may be experiencing in regards to negative health consequences, and loss of traditional
knowledge. These conclusions ultimately can inform policy, educational and development
programs aimed at improving the livelihoods of Himalayan communities.

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A. Diet Change
Respondents were asked to recall their daily diet from the past. The information and
experience they have shared is from their memory, and from a time period corresponding to
the particular respondent’s childhood and young adulthood. Most respondents were in their
60’s, and the majority of responses are in reference to the changes in the hill diet over the
course of their lifetimes. General trends over the last fifty years, particularly the last 15-20, are
considered to be the time period to which women’s recollections are referring. There was very
little discrepancy among the responses of the interviewees in regards to general trends in diet
change. Thus the results will be discussed as such, unless otherwise noted.
The traditional hill diet, as described by the respondents, consists of grains, green
leaves, vegetables and fruits, spices (masala), drinks, dairy products, oils, wild foods (noncultivated, gathered from forest or cleared land), and pulses (beans and lentils). This section is
divided into subsections, treating each aspect of the diet separately. Garhwali names will be
used throughout this section in order to maintain a sense of the cultural context of the diet and
the importance of some of these words to the respondents. The Garhwali words will be used in
italics throughout the text. The first time they are used, the English translation will be given in
parentheses. In some cases I could not find the English word for a specific food. A table at the
end of each subsection gives the Garhwali and English (where possible) names for the foods as
a reference.

59

Green Leaves
Green leaves were a major part of the hill diet in the past, whether grown in the field or
gathered wild or as weeds. This section mainly deals with the greens that were gathered as
weeds which means they were neither strictly a cultivated crop nor were they gathered from
the forest – they grew without inputs on the edges of cultivated fields, in pathways, and in
pasture land. These plants were eaten in at least one to two meals throughout the day, and in
every season a different variety of greens were available. They were an extremely important
part of the diet, prepared as a side dish eaten with a grain, cooked with grains as a main dish, or
eaten raw. Greens were used to fill the stomach when other foods were not available. Though
families still eat some greens many of the varieties, especially the ones which are gathered
from forests or cleared land, are not collected and/or eaten anymore due to a number of
reasons, including the work involved to gather and prepare them, and the status of these foods
as foods eaten during times of hunger. This will be discussed in detail below in the sections
describing women’s experiences of the traditional diet, and the structural conditions affecting
diet change.
The main seasons in the hills are winter (October – February), spring/summer (April –
June), and rainy season (July-September), and are intimately linked with the hill agriculture and
diet. Respondents generally listed all foods, including greens, by the season in which they were
gathered or grown. In the winter they ate rai, muli (radish), and gharia (mustard) which are all
cultivated. Between winter and summer they ate bhathua (lamb’s quarters), bodila, and
kandali or bhichu ghas (nettle), which are all gathered from cleared areas or the forest. In the

60

summer lal marcha (red amaranth) leaves, cholai, and savoti were available. In the rainy
season, they ate sola (pumpkin leaves), which are also cultivated. Many of these greens,
bhathua, bodila, kandali, cholai and savoti, were gathered either in the forest, from pasture
land, on the margins of fields, or from the fields themselves as weeds. These greens often grew
due to other agricultural activities, so were neither completely wild nor cultivated. For
example, Hasna Devi related a story of how villagers would collect greens such as bodila from a
pasture area where goats would stay during the rainy season, saying, “During winter snow
covers the area, then the snow melts and spring comes, bodila grows there and people would
go collect it.” She described how after the rains in July and August and after the snow in the
winter, bodila would grow in the spring, but only in the areas where goats and sheep had been
pastured during the rains. She continued on to say that, “presently there is a lot of bodila but
no one collects it.” Most families do not gather the greens that grow in cleared land or forests
anymore due to several reasons including the work involved and the status of these foods as
foods eaten during times of hunger. They do continue to grow some of the traditional
cultivated varieties.
The traditional hill diet depended on greens as a means to fill stomachs. Greens were
eaten during the afternoon meal, with dinner, and sometimes while women worked in the
forest or field during the day. Many women in one focus group described spending the entire
day in the forest and the fields without bringing an actual meal, but would bring palak (spinach)
from their home gardens, gather burans (rhododendron) flowers from the forest, and would
chop these up together to fill their stomachs while they worked. Greens were prepared as a
vegetable side dish and eaten with roti (flat bread) in the morning or night meals. Kapala and
61

depala, two dishes which were mentioned repeatedly by every participant, were prepared
regularly for lunch. These two dishes were prepared by boiling any green leaves (gathered or
cultivated) and mixing in flour made from either wheat or millet, and adding buttermilk. The
bulk of the dish was greens, the variety depended on the season, and when there wasn’t
enough flour, the dishes were still prepared using greens and buttermilk.
Women recalled the importance of green leaves in the diet, how they would be used to
fill their stomachs, and how they depended on them especially when grains and other
vegetables were not as plentiful. Indu Devi described the place of greens in the past diet:
“People used to have no income so people filled their stomachs with black palyo (made with
greens and a specific type of millet considered black in color) and kapala, they would just drink
it. They would take kandali, bodila, and make kapala and fill their stomachs.” Most also
emphasized the change in the role of green leaves in the diet, from a foodstuff they depended
on to one that is eaten occasionally, for a change in taste. This is particularly the case for the
greens that are gathered. For example, kapala and depala are not prepared regularly anymore
by the interviewees for many reasons, one being that families do not enjoy the dishes as much
as rice and roti, which are now much more readily available. Green leaves in the present are
more often cooked as a vegetable side dish, one of a choice of many vegetables now available,
to a meal of rice and pulses, or eaten with roti.

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Garhwali
Rai
Muli
Gharia
Kandali/bhichu ghas
Palak
Lal marcha
Cholai
Savoti
Sola
Bodila
Bhathua
Table 5.1. Green Leaves.

English
?
Radish
Mustard
Stinging Nettle
Spinach
Red Amaranth (leaf)
?
?
Pumpkin (leaf)
?
Lamb’s quarters, pig weed

Grains
The hill diet depended on a number of traditional grains and their varieties, which are
broadly referred to as mota anaz by Garhwalis. Major grains described by the interviewees
were mandua (also called koda), jhangora and koni (finger, barnyard, and foxtail millets);
marcha (amaranth); jao (barley); dhan or sati (rice), and gehun (wheat). The grains were and
continue to be seasonally cultivated. They were eaten, traded, stored for long term food
supply, and used for seed for the following season. The mota anaz were used for a number of
traditional dishes and eaten at each meal, though when grain supply was low families
experienced hunger and depended on green leaves and dairy products since no markets were
available. Though all respondents said they continue to cultivate a number of traditional
varieties, families no longer depend on the mota anaz for their yearly food supply, and have
transitioned to a diet mainly based on wheat flour and rice purchased from the market.
Though hill farmers have traditionally grown wheat and rice, the traditional varieties are
different than the types of wheat and rice found in the markets today, and many are no longer
63

cultivated by the villagers either. Other traditional grains such as mandua and marcha are not
readily found in the markets though they are still cultivated and eaten in small quantities, or
used as fodder for cattle. In general, families depend on wheat and rice from the market, and
though they still cultivate traditional varieties of wheat and rice, as well as millets and other
mota anaz, their main source of grain is wheat and rice purchased in the market. Divya Devi
described some of the main ways traditional grains were used in the diet:
In the summer we ate mixed roti (koda and wheat); and in the winter we ate pure koda
or mixed roti with marcha and koda flour. In the summer we ate rice, kapala, depala,
palyo (all three dishes are prepared with flour or broken grain mixed with greens,
generally made with traditional grains), and jhangora bat (barnyard millet boiled as rice
would be). In the winter we ate rice, jhangora, koni, and sometimes mandua or koda
halwa (halwa is prepared by boiling the flour of a grain and adding ghee (clarified
butter)).
She added that presently people eat much more wheat and rice, and summed up the main
change in the grain aspect of the hill diet in this way: “In the past people ate less rice and wheat
roti but they filled their stomachs with their old foods,” such as the dishes she described.
Most women recalled kapala, depala, and palyo as the major staple afternoon dishes.
These three dishes were prepared with green leaves (either gathered or cultivated) as well as
flour or broken grain mostly made from jhangora and koni, and sometimes wheat and rice.
However kapala, depala, and palyo are not eaten regularly anymore, only occasionally for a
change in taste. These days most women said they prepare white rice purchased at the market
for the afternoon meal. The white rice and wheat flour available at the market is grown in the
plains states of India such as Haryana and Punjab and are transported to the hills via road. The
production and lower sale price of these two foods are supported by the Indian government, as
part of government programs to alleviate hunger. Wheat flour and white rice are available
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cheaply through programs such as the Public Distribution Program in which poor families can
purchase these food supplies at extremely low prices (Kataki 2002). Traditional grains are not
readily available in the markets in the hills.
Roti, eaten both morning and night in most households in the past and present, is an
essential part of the hill diet. Roti was traditionally made with a variety of grains, and women
identified seven types of roti that were prepared depending on the seasonal stocks of grain
available. These were: mandua; wheat; wheat and mandua mixed; marcha; mandua and
marcha mixed; jao; and mandua and jao mixed. Though many families still eat some mandua
roti, most women interviewed said nowadays they mostly eat wheat roti made from flour
purchased at the market for morning and evening meals. Hasna Devi reported that she never
eats plain wheat roti, but always mixes mandua and wheat; and my host family in Kandara
prepared mandua roti daily while I stayed in their home. However, these were exceptions
among the women interviewed. Most respondents described a change from roti made from a
variety of grains to mostly preparing roti with purchased wheat flour.
Jhangora, koni and marcha were also prepared as bat (whole grain boiled separately the
way most people prepare rice) and eaten along with pulses or vegetables. Women said they
used to prepare jhangora, koni, and marcha bat regularly, but not in the present. This is due to
a variety of reasons such as the availability of rice in the market; the labor involved in the
cultivation and processing of home-grown grain; and the lack of availability of the traditional
grains in the market. Nowadays rice purchased from the market is prepared regularly for the
afternoon meal.

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Other dishes using grains that were prepared regularly include halwa, sattu, and manu.
Halwa is prepared by cooking flour with water and adding ghee and jaggery (an unrefined sugar
product). In the past, halwa would be prepared with marcha, wheat flour, or mixed flour
(wheat, jhangora, rice, and sometimes corn). Presently halwa is prepared mostly with wheat
flour. Sattu was prepared by roasting wheat, kala bhat (black soy bean), and jao, making a
flour, and shaping the flour into balls. This preparation was easily transported into the fields by
women to be eaten as they worked. The flour balls were dipped in water and eaten with
jaggery. Bairavi Devi spoke about sattu, and though she did not remember eating it fondly, she
remembered eating it to fill the stomach while women worked:
In the old days some families ate sattu. Sattu was especially made just before summer
season, around April and May. The women brought sattu with them to the field to eat
while working. They would take the dry sattu in a container and mix it with water in the
field when they are ready to eat.
Manu was prepared with mandua flour and mixed with water, boiled, and eaten with
buttermilk. Some women described this dish as having been eaten by poorer families who
could not afford other items that were considered more desirable or tasty. These dishes are
not prepared regularly anymore by the women interviewed due to reasons such as taste and
access to the market, though they are prepared occasionally for variety.
These dishes were all prepared with the traditional grains, are not eaten regularly
anymore, and according to one woman, even if she or other women wanted to prepare kapala,
depala, palyo, or sattu, they may not even have enough of the traditional grains to do so. In
the past, most families depended completely on their fields to feed themselves, there were no
markets. Currently, the average family produces enough food to feed themselves for three to

66

six months of the year at most. Thus, decreasing yield, as will be discussed below, is an
important factor in the transition from mota anaz to market purchased grains.
Traditional grain plants were also valued not only for the food provided by the seed, but
by the leaf parts as well. Marcha, for example, is a major source of green leaves that were a
staple of the diet, aside from providing seed. Grain plants were, and continue to be, grown for
fodder value as well. The stems of marcha were dried and stored for cattle feed. Jhangora was
useful for feeding to cattle as the straw helps to increase milk production. Though families do
not eat jhangora as a grain much anymore, it is still grown and valued as fodder for their cattle.
Though the traditional grains were high in variety, and considered highly nutritious, all
respondents emphasized the level of hunger they had experienced. Grain yields were not
enough in most families to provide an adequate food supply throughout the year, and other
sources of food were not available. Women described eating only one roti in the morning
before starting work for the day, or skipping breakfast completely. Before women had access
to the markets they depended more on greens and dairy products to feed their families, and
they experienced more hunger because of their household role to feed other family members
first. Traditional grain plants were used in every way possible to provide enough sustenance
and in many cases it still was not enough. Oma Devi and her husband described the level of
hunger they experienced in the past which forced them to prepare a dish using the dried flower
head of marcha, normally not considered a food, after the seeds had been harvested. They
described, laughing and with some embarrassment, the process of harvesting the dried flowers,
pounding them and making halwa.

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Respondents have transitioned from a diet based on numerous types of grains, as well
as many varieties of those grains, to a diet based mostly on wheat flour and white rice
purchased at the markets. Though women continue to cultivate a number of traditional grains,
some older varieties have been lost, and grain yield is low. Though they eat some of these
grains, some are used as cattle feed, and the majority of the grain portion of the diet comes
from the market. In the past grain production was also low to the point where many villagers
experienced a significant level of hunger on a regular basis, which has been alleviated due to
their ability to purchase grains at the markets. The markets (which will be discussed further
below) do not carry traditional grains or varieties.
Garhwali
Dhan/Sati
Gehun
Marcha
Mandua/Koda
Jhangora
Koni
Jao
Roti
Kapala
Depala
Palyo
Sattu

Manu
Halwa

English
Rice
Wheat
Amaranth
Finger Millet
Barnyard Millet
Foxtail Millet
Barley
Flat bread
Prepared with flour or broken grains mixed
with greens
Prepared with flour or broken grains mixed
with greens
Prepared with flour or broken grains mixed
with greens
Prepared by roasting wheat, kala bhat (black
soy bean), and jao, making a flour, and
shaping the flour into balls
Prepared with mandua flour and mixed with
water, boiled, and eaten with buttermilk
Prepared by cooking flour with water and
adding ghee (clarified butter) and jaggery (an
unrefined sugar product).

Table 5.2. Grains and Grain Dishes.
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Fruits and Vegetables
Vegetables are generally used to prepare side dishes which are eaten with rice and
pulses, or with roti. Fruits are eaten as snacks between meals, though in the past fruits were
used to prepare main dishes. Traditionally, people only had access to the vegetables and fruits
they grew in their gardens, which varied with the seasons. During the rainy season the yield
was the greatest. At other times of the year families would collect greens, wild foods, or not
eat vegetables at all, using salt, onions, ghee and other elements of the diet to eat with roti.
Some fruits were used that still grow, but are not used in the regular diet anymore such as figs
and peaches; others were gathered wild and are no longer collected; and still others are newer
to the region such as apples and malta, a type of orange. Some varieties of vegetables are
simply not found anymore because they are not grown or they cannot grow due to climatic
changes, and families have stopped eating as many green leaves as their access to other more
desirable market vegetables has increased. Other vegetables, like onions, were not found in
the past and are now staples. Though families rely on vegetables from the market now more
than in the past, many women felt that homegrown fruits and vegetables taste much better
than those from the market. Vegetable consumption and cultivation, however, seems to have
changed less than greens, grains, and pulses. In general, fruits seem to have been and continue
to be a less significant part of the diet than vegetables, so changes to fruit consumption, though
somewhat significant in terms of the decrease in wild fruit consumption, was not referred to
often by the women during the conversations.

69

Women described a long list of vegetables that made up a part of the traditional diet,
many of which continue to be grown and eaten today in their fields, as well as purchased at the
market. These include: hari phalli (green beans), aloo (potatoes), tamatar (tomatoes), mirch
(chili peppers), baingan (eggplant), kadu (pumpkin), muli (radish), palak (spinach), gharia
(mustard), arbi (taro root), pyaz (onions), and kirikenda, chichenda, tori, and karela (different
types of gourds). Though many women said that in their childhood they did not eat as much
onion (or any at all) as they do these days, this list of vegetables is generally consistent with the
current diet. However, there may be new types of vegetables available in the market that were
not previously available, as well as varieties of vegetables that were grown that are no longer
found. Before the availability of markets, this selection of vegetables was only available during
the rainy season, while the rest of the year families relied on green leaves, foods gathered from
the forest, and fruits such as timla, bedu (both types of figs), and aadu (peach). Now, however,
fruits and vegetables are available all year round at the local markets.
Timla, bedu, and aadu trees were grown on the terraces, and the fruits were an
important part of the diet, often used as a vegetable (cooked or salted). They were used to
prepare special types of dishes that are no longer prepared though the fruit trees are still
producing fruit in families’ gardens. Gauri Devi described how unripe peaches were smashed
and mixed with salt and eaten with roti, a preparation called kathela. Currently kathela is not
prepared regularly because families can purchase vegetables all year round, though it was
remembered by some women as very tasty. It is likely that many families eat the peaches fresh
as a snack (as I did with the host family), but that families do not rely on the peaches as part of
their diet.
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Timla and bedu formed an important part of the diet in past, serving to fill stomachs
when other foods were not available. Several dishes were prepared using these fruits that
were not spoken of as if they were delicacies, often spoken of in the context of eating to avoid
hunger. Women described a variety of dishes prepared using timla. Some remember making
stuffed roti, using the unripe timla which were boiled, made into a paste and put inside the roti.
Sometimes they boiled the timla and mixed it with flour (a type of kapala using figs instead of
greens). Sometimes they prepared the unripe figs with salt and masala (spices). These were
not considered delicacies or dishes that women remember fondly, but were considered dishes
prepared during times of hunger. Though timla and bedu trees continue to grow on the
terraces, the fruits are not used to prepare dishes regularly anymore by the women
interviewed. Again, perhaps like the peaches, they are eaten occasionally as a snack food. One
day we went to visit a neighbor of our hostess in Kandara and we picked and ate many figs
while in conversation with her. Neither she nor her family members were particularly
interested in eating them, nor did they discourage us from eating them, but the tree was still
productive.
Though many types of vegetables were grown in the past and continue to be cultivated
and be a part of the hill diet, several women mentioned vegetables that are no longer
cultivated due to a variety of reasons. For example, Eka Devi described several different
varieties of pumpkins which are no longer planted because the climate is different and they do
not grow as well - sometimes there are hailstorms and they get ruined; and there are insect
problems they did not used to have. Some of the varieties of pumpkins they mentioned were
gol armyoth and twama armyoth, as well as older varieties of gourds such as kirikenda and loki
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they no longer grow. Indu Devi remembered lemon trees which produced a variety of lemon
much larger than is found today. She described how in the past people would use these lemons
to make chutney which was eaten with roti. However, this chutney is no longer prepared and
one family spoke as if the fruit was no longer available.
Though some varieties of vegetables that were grown in the past are no longer found,
grown or eaten, some new varieties have been introduced into the hill diet and fields.
However, in general the major change in the vegetable aspect of the hill diet, according to the
women interviewed, is the change from the previously limited seasonal availability of
vegetables, to where families can now purchase vegetables at market year round.
Garhwali
Kadu
Loki
Kirikenda
Malta
Timla
Bedu
Aadu
Chichenda
Tori
Karela
Gol Armyoth
Twama Armyoth
Arbi
Pyaz
Hari Phali
Tamatar
Baingan
Aloo
Mirch
Muli
Palak
Gharia
Table 5.3. Fruits and Vegetables.

English
Pumpkin
Bottle Gourd
Type of Gourd
Orange
Fig
Fig
Peach
Type of Gourd
Type of Gourd
Bitter Gourd
Type of Pumpkin
Type of Pumpkin
Taro
Onion
Green Beans
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Potato
Chili Pepper
Radish
Spinach
Mustard
72

Pulses
The traditional hill diet includes many types of locally grown pulses (lentils and beans).
The different types of pulses in themselves contain different varieties. Pulses are generally
cooked as a main dish during the afternoon meal, as a stew, and eaten with rice or roti. Though
families continue to grow and eat these local pulses, the quantity grown and eaten has
decreased, and families now purchase pulses from the market. The market does not carry local
varieties of pulses, and women feel that the market pulses do not have the taste of the locally
grown varieties or the pulses from the past. Some varieties of local pulses are no longer found
in their fields. Traditional dishes were prepared that were based on these local varieties, but
are no longer eaten regularly, and many are remembered fondly.
All women interviewed ate pulses on a regular basis as part of the afternoon or evening
meals. The types of pulses women listed include: rajma (kidney beans), gehet/kulat (horse
gram), kala bhat (black soya bean), safed bhat (white soya bean), desi bhat (brown soya bean),
toor (yellow pigeon pea), urad (black gram), sontha (cow pea), lobia (black-eyed peas), gaitha,
massoor (red lentil), and rains (azuki bean). Lalita Devi remembered a few different varieties of
each type of pulse that her family grew and ate in the past: They used to eat rains of which
there was one type. There was also one type gehet; two types of lobia, one small and one big;
two types of massoor; and two types of toor, a small red one and a big white one. She said
there was one type of soya bean, but others in the room said there were two. And there were
three types of rajma, one used for pulse and two for fresh vegetables (green beans). Other

73

women described three varieties of soya bean - white, black and desi or brown - and eight or
nine varieties of rajma.
Hasna Devi became so excited when I asked her about the different types of rajma that
she asked her young grandson, who had been listening intently to the interview, to bring out
the container in which they stored the seeds. We then spent quite some time describing the
different colors of seed and the characteristics of the different colors. Some seeds were pink
and spotted, others black, some tan, others white, all stored together. As we sorted the
different colors she commented,
There are many varieties of rajma, but we only define them by the color. We didn’t
count the varieties (in the past). Presently we have fewer colors - some new colors, old
colors are lost. Different color rajma have different tastes. If you make white only it is
one taste, but if you mix it, it is another taste. Many varieties have been lost but I don’t
know how.
She and her grandson showed me how they identified varieties by color, size and shape, and
though there are distinctions between the different colors/varieties of rajma, she said that they
are sown, harvested and cooked together. She noted that she remembered many more colors
than the eight we identified that day, but she is not sure why she no longer sees seeds that
were sown previously. Hasna Devi speculated that it was perhaps due to pollination from
varieties purchased at the market that were then planted alongside older varieties.
Though most women said that they continue to grow many of the same traditional pulse
varieties, they felt that the yields had decreased in recent years. Some women said they used
to sell surplus pulses, implying that the yield was high enough to be able to feed their families
and to make a profit. Bairavi Devi recalled that “people used to grow a lot of rajma and a lot of
daal (general word for a pulse or a dish prepared using any type of pulse). But these days there
74

is less on people’s farms.” Women described their increasing reliance on pulses purchased from
the market, yet many felt that market pulses did not have the same taste as pulses grown in
their fields, given that they could purchase the same variety that they grew. For example, focus
group participants in Kandara said that they grow urad, but when they purchase urad from the
market it does not have the same taste; perhaps, they speculated, because it comes from far
away. They preferred the taste of the pulses grown in their own fields. Also, the market
generally did not carry local varieties, so they felt that had to eat what is available. Chanda Devi
referred to the taste of home-grown pulses, saying, “people used to make mixed daal – rajma,
bhat, gehet – which was very tasty. But presently we cannot find such taste.” However,
families continue to eat pulses daily. Very often women will prepare daal in the afternoon that
consists of a variety of pulses mixed together. This daal is also sometimes eaten at the evening
meal.
Traditional dishes that were repeatedly described as having been regularly prepared
previously using local pulses include bhatwani, ghatwani, khumada, and chausa. These dishes
were also seasonally prepared, eaten in the winter during the afternoon meal. Chausa was
prepared using black urad which was roasted, ground into a powder, and then flavored and
boiled. Bhatwani is a similar preparation, but made with kala bhat. Sometimes a special roti
was made by stuffing it with gehet, sontha, lobia, rajma, or other pulses. Though women do
prepare these dishes occasionally, many women said they are not eaten as regularly as in their
childhood and young adulthood.

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The major change to the pulse aspect of the diet is an increasing reliance on pulses
purchased at the market. These pulse varieties are not representative of the locally grown
varieties. Those which are the same variety as a locally grown one do not have the same taste.
Though families continue to cultivate many traditional varieties of pulses, some varieties are no
longer found in the fields; and the quantity has decreased over time, substituted by market
pulses. Dishes made from local pulses that were prepared regularly in the past are prepared
less frequently in the present. However, pulses are still a daily part of the hill diet.
Garhwali
Rajma/Chaimi/Chamala
Toor Daal
Urad Daal
Gehet/Kulat
Kala Bhat
Safed Bhat
Desi Bhat
Sontha
Lobia
Rains
Massoor Daal
Gaitha
Chausa

Bhatwani
Table 5.4. Pulses

English
Kidney Beans (though people used it to refer
to many other large beans)
Yellow Pigeon Pea
Black Gram
Horse Gram
Black soy bean
White soy bean
Brown soy bean
Cow pea
Black-eyed pea (one type of cow pea)
Azuki bean
Red Lentil
?
Prepared using black urad which was roasted,
ground into a powder, and then flavored and
boiled.
Prepared similar to chausa but using kala bhat

Dairy Products
Women remembered that their families had a large number of cattle, and, therefore,
plenty of dairy products in their diet such as dudh (milk), butter, ghee (clarified butter), chanch
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(buttermilk) and dahi (yogurt). These products were used to prepare a wide variety of main
dishes and sweet dishes, and ghee was used for frying. Presently due to a number of changes
socially and environmentally, families have fewer cattle and eat less dairy products. Families
also prefer to sell some dairy products rather than eat all of them, a practice which would not
have happened in the past culturally because it was looked down upon. Dairy products are
seen as important to previous survival, and though less linked to survival today, are still
considered healthy and a very important part of the diet.
Respondents recalled that rotis were eaten with ghee and salt, or ghee and honey, often
in the morning meal. They would sometimes eat buttermilk and roti. This was often the case
because families did not have enough other foods, such as vegetables or grains, to eat with the
roti, and dairy products were very plentiful. Gauri Devi recounted that “in those days we had
enough ghee and milk because we had a lot of cattle and no market to sell the products.” Indu
Devi said similarly that “people had enough ghee and milk, so they would eat or drink these
plus buttermilk.” Bairavi Devi noted that poorer families however had fewer cattle and
therefore less dairy products, drawing attention to the difference in the diet of different
families.
Many traditional dishes were prepared with dairy products. Anjali and Amita Devi
described some of the traditional dishes that incorporated dairy products, mentioning khadi,
which is still regularly eaten these days, prepared with buttermilk and flour; and palyo, similar
to khadi but less commonly prepared today, made with jhangora, koni, or rice grains and
buttermilk, or sometimes flour (made from a variety of grains) and buttermilk. Focus group

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participants emphasized the importance of dairy products, along with wheat and rice, for
children. Children used to eat milk, ghee, and khir, a sweetened preparation of rice and milk.
Sometimes they would grind wheat and rice together and make halwa with milk for children.
Though most families still have some cattle, they have fewer than in previous years, and
presently excess dairy products are occasionally sold at market. Thus, families eat less dairy
products on the whole than in the past.
Garhwali
Dahi
Chanch
Dudh
Ghee
Khadi

Khir

English
Yogurt
Buttermilk
Milk
Clarified Butter
Prepared by cooking buttermilk with flour,
which could be made from different types of
grains
Prepared by boiling milk and adding either rice
or other types of grain

Table 5.5. Dairy Products.

Wild Foods
Women traditionally gathered many types of wild foods on a regular basis to
supplement the family’s diet. Many fruits and other types of plants, including medicinal plants,
were gathered from the forest while women worked. Though people occasionally gather
produce from the forest in the present, most families do not gather food or medicine regularly
from the forest anymore for a number of reasons, including forest regulations, access to the
market to purchase food supplies, and cultural shifts in which gathering wild foods is associated
with times when families were hungry.
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Wild foods were often gathered while women worked in the forest gathering fuel and
fodder. When they went to the jungle to work they would sometimes find fruits. If they found
only a small quantity they would eat it themselves, but if there was enough they would bring it
home for their families. Kavita Devi named several wild foods she remembered gathering
regularly from the forest as a young woman: kafal, ghingora, hisar (a type of berry found in
both yellow and black), mol (similar to a pear), burans (rhododendron flower - they would make
juice by squeezing the flower or eat the flower for the nectar flavor); and chaunda (a root they
would dig up and then scrape it and drink the juice from the root, a white liquid). Focus group
members and other women from Kandara village also mentioned a few other fruits and other
wild plants such as kuthda and chandru that they gathered as young women, but no longer do.
Lingoda, or fiddleheads, were gathered from the forest and brought home and prepared as a
vegetable side dish. During my stay with my host family we gathered lingoda several times. It
was cooked with garlic and chili and we ate it with roti. However, most interviewees said they
do not gather food regularly from the forest anymore.
Wild foods were an important part of the diet due to similar reasons that green leaves
were – hunger and nutrition. Oma Devi recounted that as a young woman she and her family
ate all the herbal plants that were available. They ate kandali and marcha greens as well as
jungle plants. They ate all the local weeds because grain production was quite low. She also
recounted the importance of having knowledge when gathering wild food in order to determine
whether a wild plant was edible or not, such as jaranga and arbi (taro root). She remembered
checking to see if these types of plants were edible by cutting the stem – if it was hollow they
could eat that variety, and if the stem was full then it was a poisonous variety. She said they do
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not eat anything from the forest anymore, pointing to the potential loss of knowledge of these
wild plants if they are no longer gathered and eaten.
Traditionally wild foods were gathered while women worked in the forest and were also
an important source of food due to low grain production. Though some families continue to
occasionally gather wild foods, most families in the various village sites no longer regularly
gather from the forest.
Garhwali
Jaranga
Mol
Burans
Lingoda
Kuthda
Chandru
Kafal
Ghingora
Hisar
Chaunda
Table 5.6. Wild Foods.

English
?
Type of wild pear
Rhododendron flower
Fiddle head (fern)
?
?
?
?
Blackberry relative (yellow and black varieties)
?

Oil
Vegetable side dishes are prepared using either oil or ghee to sauté, and oil is used to
prepare the spices for pulse dishes. Traditionally oil was not used very often in hill diets due to
the difficulty in processing oil seed by hand and the abundance of ghee. Families grew a variety
of oil seeds, including til (sesame), gharia (mustard), and bhangjeera (perilla), and processed
them by hand to make oil. No market was available to purchase oil so very little of it was used,
or none at all, though families used ghee for frying. Now families use more oil in their cooking,

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such as refined sunflower or soybean oils, because it is easily available at the market. Increased
cooking oil consumption has been documented throughout India, and is linked to diet-related
disease in urban populations (Misra et al. 2011), indicating the possibility of health risks in hill
populations as well. Oil seed plants also were part of mixed planting groups, and these
traditional planting systems are becoming less common. Some families continue to plant them
nowadays though in less quantities, and none of the women interviewed mentioned processing
oil seed at home in the present.
Garhwali
Til
Bhangjeera
Gharia
Table 5.7. Oil Seeds

English
Sesame
Perilla
Mustard

Drinks
During my two months in Uttarakhand I drank many cups of chai (tea, usually prepared
with milk and sugar). Chai is taken first thing in the morning in the way that people from many
other cultures drink coffee. Garhwalis often drink a second cup in the late afternoon, and it is
always served to guests as soon as they arrive at one’s home (and served to you if you are the
guest). Garhwalis, including children, generally drink several cups of chai each day. This custom
is relatively new in the hills - families did not drink chai regularly as they do today. They would
drink water, buttermilk, home-made juice, and herbal preparations. One herbal preparation
that was mentioned several times in Kandara village was chakunda. It is an herb that was used
to prepare a tea that was taken regularly, especially by the elderly, before chai became

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available. None of the interviewees described drinking herbal preparations regularly in the
present. Oma Devi and her husband said that in the past, chai was used very minimally for
medicinal purposes, but now chai is taken multiple times per day, including first thing in the
morning, by most people including children. Juices were also made from fruits and flowers
such as burans that were grown on local trees or gathered wild. Now, though many families
continue to make their own juices from roses, burans flower, and malta, local markets carry
juice concentrate, including a local brand called Pahadi which uses many locally harvested
ingredients. Madhu Devi reported that her family used ginger, cumin and other spices to make
preparations in the case of illness, but now juices are purchased from the market to treat those
same illnesses. Another family who runs a tea stall and small market on the side of a main
tourist route road was feeding a one year old child orange soda during the interview,
demonstrating the introduction of purchased beverages, while in the past villagers did not have
access to such drinks. One important change in the addition of chai and soft drinks is the
increased consumption of sugar, which is linked to diet-related diseases such as diabetes in
other regions (O’Dea and Piers 2002).
Respondents recalled that their families drank water, milk, buttermilk, home-made juice
and herbals teas. Presently, though families still drink water, milk, buttermilk and some homemade juice, chai, sodas and store bought juice have become a greater part of the diet and
herbal teas have become much less common.

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Garhwali
Chai
Chakunda
Table 5.8. Drinks.

English
Tea, usually prepared with milk and sugar
Herbal preparation

Masala
Masala (spice) is used to prepare many cooked foods in the hill diet including pulses,
vegetable side dishes, and chutneys. Masala is also considered to have health value, aside from
its ability improve the flavor of foods. Women recalled that families grew all of their own
masala and pounded them using the silabata, a large flat grinding stone (see Figure 5.1 – a
photo of me trying to pound spices – I found that it is not such an easy process). Commonly
used masalas were adarak (ginger), lehssun (garlic), haldi (turmeric), jeera (cumin), dhaniya
(coriander), and mirch (chili pepper), all of which continue to be planted in families’ fields and
used on a daily basis. During the months before the rains and during the beginning of the rainy
season, most families in the villages I visited were drying their own garlic supply, leaving it in
the sun during the day and bringing it under a roof at night or when it rained. It was clear that
many families still cultivate and use their own garlic. Women felt that pounding home-grown
ingredients produced the best tasting masala. Nowadays, families still grow some masalas, but
often purchase powders from the market, and even have access to some varieties which they
did not have in the past, such as boxed spice mixes. However, many feel the store bought
masalas do not have the same or as good of a taste as those home-grown and pounded on the
silabata.

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Garhwali
Adarak
Lehssun
Haldi
Jeera
Dhaniya
Mirch
Table 5.9. Masala

English
Ginger
Garlic
Turmeric
Cumin
Coriander
Chili Pepper

Figure 5.1 Silabata. My attempt to grind whole dried red chilis, garlic,
and other spices into a paste using a small grinding rock on the
silabata.

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Section Summary and Discussion
The above subsections describe the specific changes to different aspects of the hill diet
according to the respondents in this study. Certain aspects of the diet have changed more than
others – the substitution of purchased wheat and rice for the wide variety of traditional grains
is quite dramatic, while the types of vegetables eaten have not changed as significantly.
However, the general trend for the aspects of the diet discussed above is away from traditional
varieties and homegrown foods, toward an increasing reliance on foods purchased at market.
Masalas, which were grown and processed at home traditionally, are now purchased in powder
form by many families; soft drinks and packaged noodles are purchased at the market; and
ghee made from families’ cattle has been replaced by store-bought refined vegetable oils.
Many of these trends reflect some of the patterns of diet change worldwide that are leading to
increasing rates of diet-related disorders. They also reflect a departure from traditional
systems based on local ecological knowledge to an increasing reliance on “expert” knowledge in
the form of industrially farmed rice and wheat and packaged foods. Both of these trends could
lead to negative consequences for hill communities in terms of health, cultural preservation,
and sovereignty (in this case the ability to provide for one’s own food supply).
At the same time, the desire to decrease workloads, changes in personal preferences
and tastes, and the desire for cultural change are important factors that have led to people
choosing a more modern diet. The following section describes women’s experiences and views
of the traditional diet, leading to a richer understanding of the diet changes described above.

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B. Women’s Experience of the Traditional Diet
While discussing the ways in which the traditional diet has changed and continues to
change, women shared a diverse array of experiences and views of the traditional foods. In
some cases these views were contradictory. Some views related to the health or nutritive value
of the foods, the diversity, the freshness, and the taste of foods that are no longer easily found.
At the same time, women shared less positive experiences with the traditional foods such as
boredom with eating the same foods repeatedly, a lack of choice, insufficient quantities of food
and hunger, restrictions to their diet as women, and heavy workloads associated with the
cultivation and preparation of traditional crops and foods. These impressions will be discussed
in the two subsections below and will provide the context for the third and final section which
discusses the structural factors that affect diet change. The qualitative data in these two
subsections complicate the picture of diet change, demonstrating that diet change is a complex
interplay of personal choices within a context of structural opportunities and limitations.
Experiences and associations people have with food and culture play into people’s food
choices, as do ecological, social, and political change. Moreover, these impressions reveal the
importance of a gendered inquiry into these complex processes, as gender roles lead to
different experiences of work, family life, and food.
Health
The majority of respondents shared a perception that people were healthier in the past,
and that this health was due, in part, to the traditional diet. Traditional foods not only provide
essential nutrients, but also contain medicinal properties (see Dangwal et al. 2008; Maikhuri et
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al. 1999; and Narayanan and Kumar 2007). They are also fresh and tasty, and overall are
perceived as healthier and of higher quality than food purchased at the market. Hasna Devi
shared her view of the difference in taste between store-bought and homegrown foods:
The taste of the new varieties is different than the older varieties. We look at the color
and decide which is tasty and which is not. These days the pumpkins are not as
tasty…The taste of the vegetables I grow are better than the ones you eat in your city.
(She pointed to the onion drying on her terrace). These are tastier than the ones you eat
in your city. The ones we grow ourselves taste better than the ones we buy in market.
The onions from market are more bitter.
Aside from differences in taste between homegrown and store-bought foods, many of
the respondents felt that people did not fall sick and were overall healthier and happier in the
past, which was in some way related to the traditional diet. Anjali Devi shared her impression
that people were stronger in the past and that there were fewer diseases, while in the present
people tend to fall sick more easily and are weaker. She also felt that this was connected to the
diet, saying that food in the past was pure and good, though it wasn’t enough, and that
nowadays food is sufficient, but it is not healthy. Members of both focus groups in Kandara felt
that they were seeing diseases that were not encountered in the past, and that this was
connected, in part, to the change in diet, as well as other changes such as clothing. One focus
group member in Kandara gave a specific example, saying that nowadays people heal more
slowly from wounds, whereas “in previous days when people cut themselves with their tools
they would grab some medicinal leaves from the jungle and hold it over the cut and the body
healed quickly.” Indu Devi recalled that, “Sometimes we would feel some stomach pain. We
would drink boiled water with salt. There was nothing extra we could give sick people, but we
would give hot water with salt for stomach pains,” and this type of remedy would be enough to
help people heal. This ability to heal more quickly or to avoid illness was connected to the
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traditional diet by the majority of respondents, due to characteristics of the traditional diet
such as freshness and quality, and knowing where the food comes from. Focus group members
in Kandara felt that food from their own fields is tastier, fresher, and healthier than food from
market. They felt that something about cultivating food with one’s own hands allows you to
know about the food, whereas with food from the market one doesn’t know everything about
where it comes from. Though these views may be somewhat romantic of the past, they do
shed light on the perception that in general, the traditional diet is believed to have contributed
to the greater health people recalled having experienced in the past.
More specific examples of the healthfulness of traditional foods were also shared by
many respondents. Bairavi Devi felt that “kapala gives a lot of energy… rice and wheat are not
as nutritious and do not give as much energy.” Hasna Devi, unique among respondents in that
she resists the trend to depend upon purchased wheat flour said, “We never eat only atta
(wheat flour), we always mix mandua” because “rice and atta are not good. You don’t know
how long the rice and atta has been in the store or where it comes from so it is not healthy for
you.” Indu Devi also emphasized that, ”you don’t know how long the rice and flour has been in
the store or where it comes from so it is not healthy for you,” adding, “people were stronger
back then.” Eka and Eesha Devi, while seated in their field with two younger women, taking a
short break from their work to speak with us, shared similar opinions of purchased rice and
wheat in comparison to traditional grains and greens. Eka Devi used the body language of
strong arms to show the strength one gets after eating kapala, and she said it has a lot of
vitamins. However, she said that rice and wheat roti do not give the same strength, pointing to
one of the younger women seated nearby, saying she is weaker because she only eats rice and
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wheat roti. Lalita Devi identified three dairy products - ghee, yogurt, and milk - along with
mandua, as the foods that give the most energy; and focus group participants in Kandara
named mandua, jhangora, ghee, and milk as the most nutritious foods. No respondents named
white rice or wheat flour, or any other purchased item, as being healthier than the traditional
grains and dairy products.
Respondents also described some of the medicinal benefits of the traditional foods,
reflecting a similarity to many traditional cultures in which food and medicine are not
completely separate categories. Narenderji, the male traditional healer, described the
medicinal properties of mandua, useful in treating diabetes and digestive problems, as well as
in its contribution to strong bones. He and Hasna Devi both described the use of koni grains to
treat female reproductive disorders, specifically the use of seven year old koni grain. They both
emphasized the importance of the age and the type of grain. Hasna Devi reported that,
“Sometimes a lady has suthigya after delivery - she gets dysentery, vomiting, fever. People
gave her old koni bat. The seven year old koni is the best.” And she also described a type of
black rice, not grown commonly in the present, which was used to treat women’s reproductive
disorders as well. Narenderji described the use of lal chaval (a traditional variety of red rice)
used to treat kidney stones; of jhangora to treat jaundice when prepared with buttermilk; of
kandali to treat joint pain; timla to treat dysentery and other digestive problems; and mol to
help with lactation. Chanda Devi also described the use of gehet to treat kidney stones.
Respondents overall felt that people were healthier in the past and that the traditional
diet contributed in part to the healthfulness of their communities. Respondents also attributed

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healthy characteristics to many traditional foods including high energy content, nutrients,
freshness, and medicinal properties, characteristics that were not attributed to purchased
foods. Interestingly, this view is shared by all respondents who are also participating in a
transition away from the traditional diet, bringing a sense of contradiction and greater
complexity to an understanding of how and why traditional diets change. As Finnis found in her
study in the Kolli Hills in South India, families preferred their traditional foods, but due to
changes in the political ecology and the economy, were unable to access them (2007). Though
the communities in the Kolli Hills are different than those of the Himalaya, Finnis’ study lends
insight into the complexity of the process of diet change taking place in Uttarakhand, and the
importance of understanding the experience of the traditional diet and diet change of the
community members themselves.
Women and Hunger
Hunger
The traditional diet was diverse in crop varieties, locally grown, healthy, and of high
quality in terms of taste and freshness, but according to all respondents, insufficient. All
participants reported experiencing hunger on a regular basis in previous years, and said they no
longer do. People felt that they had no choice, that they had to eat the same foods over and
over, some of which were not tasty. Now they feel they have more choice and can eat more for
taste than necessity. Many used the word mazburi - which translates as helplessness or
compulsion – when describing the traditional foods. They had to eat those foods, they had no
choice. Families divided limited food supplies among members, with women often eating less,

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due to their gender role to feed other family members first. Many women said they never felt
full with their own family’s food supply, nor did they have access to a market or income to
purchase from a market. Respondents associated the traditional foods with the experience of
hunger in the past, and, I argue, this experience of hunger is intimately connected to the
significant changes in diet Garhwalis are experiencing. Foods which stir up memories of
deprivation, eaten out of necessity, are not considered desirable in the present when other
options are now available. Thus many traditional foods, due to their association with hunger
and necessity, are no longer desirable, and this perception, combined with the heavy workload
to cultivate them and the availability of store-bought foods are factors important to the context
of diet change.
Hasna Devi, as all other respondents, remembered that in the old days they did not have
enough to eat, so they ate what was available, but they never felt full enough. Gauri Devi
recalled that sometimes she and her family did not eat breakfast, they would just eat two times
in the day. Indu Devi elaborated:
In those days there was not enough to eat. Sometimes we did not eat breakfast and
only ate lunch and dinner but sometimes there was not enough food for lunch and
dinner. Sometimes we would cook and serve what we had and split between everyone,
but it may not always fill your stomach.
Many remember a feeling that some of the foods were not tasty, but they had no choice but to
eat certain things to fill their stomachs. For example, Bairavi Devi described the use of timla in
the diet:
Some poor families, if had no atta (flour), they would eat only the paste of the timlas.
They picked the unripe fruit (soft but not sweet) and mixed it with ash to counter the
taste and stickiness of the fig milk, boiled it, and then made a paste. Then they would

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prepare roti and kapala and eat with only a little masala. They did not like this but
sometimes they had no choice.
Indu Devi recounted eating palyo and kapala, saying, “People used to have no income
so people filled their stomachs with black palyo, they would just drink it, and kapala. They had
no other options and even this would not fill their stomachs.” Thus some of the traditional
dishes and foods were eaten to fill the stomach, were not necessarily enjoyable, and even then
it was often not enough.
Women felt that in their youth they had very little choice in their diet due to the lack of
options and supply, and that they ate to fill their stomachs, whereas nowadays people eat what
they choose to eat and are able to eat for taste. Thus, people’s relationship to the traditional
diet and feelings toward the traditional diet are different than their feelings towards the
present diet. The present diet provides new choices, abundance, and freedom from many
time-consuming agricultural and food preparation tasks. Women remembered a sense of
constant hunger, compulsion, boredom, and lack of choice while presently people feel they
have more choice and can eat for taste. Hasna Devi explained: “Presently people eat different
kinds of food and they have a lot of choice. They hear about other types of food and they want
to taste it. People take the opportunity to taste new things when possible.” The ability to eat
what one chooses and to eat what one enjoys, just for the taste, was an important change that
many women referred to, because it freed them from mazburi, or the helplessness of eating
only what they could grow. Also, purchasing food from the market saves women hours of work
from cultivation, processing, and preparation tasks. At the same time, though women

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appreciated the ability to choose a variety of foods from the market, they also felt that the
present diet is not as healthy as the traditional diet, as discussed above.
Though women had many positive perceptions of most of the traditional crops and
foods in terms of taste and health, the association with hunger is very strong. The feelings that
people have towards the foods and their past experience with them are important and
contribute to choices leading to diet change. Since women in this study associated the
traditional diet with a sense of helplessness, a lack of choice, and hunger, new foods represent
the ability to be satisfied, to choose what one wants to eat, to eat based on the taste of food,
and to try new things. Though women see health as a trade off, the desire to move away from
the experience of hunger and helplessness may directly impact a woman’s choice to move
towards an industrial diet, and less invested in preserving the traditional diet.
Women’s Diet
Another important aspect of the traditional diet is the fact that women often ate
differently, and generally more poorly, than men. Women described ways in which gender
roles in the family affected young women’s diets in the past. Many women related stories of
families reserving what were considered “better” foods such as wheat and rice for male and
elder family members, while women, especially younger women, were only given mandua and
green leaves. Bairavi Devi described an aspect of the way women’s diets differed in the family,
especially that of young women:
Young ladies needed more to eat so we gave them more kapala and less of other foods.
But for children, men, and elders we gave them the better foods, like rice, and less of
kapala. Sometimes if there were leftovers of good food we would eat it. Otherwise
only kapala and depala.
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Thus, in many households women, especially young women, who bore the greatest work
burden in the fields, were not given what were considered to be better or tastier foods, but
were given less desirable foods that were also associated with a high energy content for work.
They were also not given food if there was not enough. Bairavi Devi described this process
saying, “the housewife would serve the men and others first and if there was any leftover then
she would eat. If there was not enough food the daughter-in-law would not eat.”
Women’s place in the household hierarchy also depended on age, with older women,
especially mothers-in-law, having greater access to more desirable foods and limiting younger
women’s diets. However, some women also described how this dynamic has changed in the
present due to social and infrastructural changes. Focus group participants recalled that as
young women they ate fewer vegetables than they do now because their mothers-in-law
restricted their consumption, but now they can eat what they want from the market. As in the
sense of freedom from hunger and from the repetition of eating only what is available, access
to the foods in the market may also be associated with a social and cultural transformation in
which young women’s diets are no longer restricted.
In addition, because women and men have different work roles, women’s diets also
differed based on their work schedules and activities. As mentioned above, mandua and green
leaves were considered high energy foods, appropriate especially for young women who
carried out many of the heavy tasks in the field and home. Many women recalled that they
would eat very little during the day as they worked, having one or two rotis in the morning,
sometimes skipping lunch because they were in the fields or forest all day. They also said they

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would eat more on the days that they would be doing heavy work and less on days with light
work, skipping breakfast on those days. Divya Devi recalled that in summer, if they were not
going to do any hard work, they would not eat breakfast. Women would sometimes bring food
to the forest while they worked and also sometimes gather wild foods to eat while working, as
in the examples given above of bringing sattu, or bringing palak and gathering burans flowers.
Older focus group participants in Saari recalled that they would leave home at eight in the
morning and stay out of the house until eight at night. They did not eat anything during the
day, though in the winter they might bring roti with them. Sometimes they would have to
travel as far as 20 kilometers in order to gather necessary supplies from the forest, and return
this distance carrying heavy loads without having eaten.
Finally women’s diet differed due to specific reproductive stages in their lives such as
menstruation and pregnancy. Though many women said that no special foods were given
during or after pregnancy because there were no special foods to give, Bairavi Devi, who served
as a midwife in her community for 60 years, gave some insight into some of the dietary
restrictions for pregnant women:
No special dishes were given to pregnant women but there were some restrictions such
as pinnalu (taro), and lal marcha, not restricted by all families but only in some. For
lactating women there were no restricted foods but sometimes the woman ate
something, such as palyo, and the baby had a problem. If there was a problem with
bonding between mother and baby then the greens would become restricted, otherwise
not. Some green leaves are restricted for lactating women. She also could not eat new
wheat flour, and it is also restricted in present times. People think that if new flour is
given to lactating women, there may be a serious problem with the baby such as sarola
(vomiting and loose motion). Peaches are not restricted but other fruits such as bedu
and timla are. People give lactating mothers jhangora, mandua and older wheat and
mixed roti.

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Anjali and Amita Devi described the specific dietary restrictions she knew of for
pregnant women, adding also that pregnant women got enough to eat - if there was not
enough food others would eat less so she could have enough. Also, families gave milk-rich
foods, such as khir and suggested that she does not eat much oil and ghee. They suggested
that she not carry out heavy work. Immediately after delivery they gave her hot ghee to drink,
and gave her halwa made from wheat flour and ghee, and served hot. Their families also
followed the practice of restricting pregnant women’s consumption of wheat flour from the
new crop of wheat. Madhu Devi emphasized the importance of increasing a pregnant woman’s
ghee consumption, which seemed to be a point of disagreement among the interviewees.
Some recalled that pregnant women restricted ghee consumption, and others recalled that
ghee consumption was increased. However, there was agreement that increased ghee
consumption after delivery was important, and that generally families did observe special diets
for pregnant women though there were not special foods per se.
Women ate differently in the past due to factors such as gender and power dynamics in
the household, gendered work roles, and reproductive health. Women, especially young
women and daughters-in-law, were not given what were considered “better” foods and were
not presented with choices in their diet. Women also experienced hunger when food supplies
were not sufficient for their families, and when they spent entire days working in the field or
forest. Young women, however, were given some richer foods and sufficient food during
pregnancy. Many of these gendered ways of portioning food have changed. Women now eat
what they choose and eat enough, and though they may still serve other family members first,
most families have enough to eat so that young women do not have to go hungry. They can
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also eat desirable foods such as rice and wheat. These experiences highlight the relationship
between women’s work and hunger, of working all day with no food or very little food, and the
importance of these experiences in shaping the ways women instigate and adjust to changes in
the traditional diet. If the traditional diet is associated with hunger, sacrifice for other family
members, and a heavy work load, the desire and willingness to accept and even seek out new
foods may be stronger.
Section Summary and Discussion
Respondents shared both positive views as well as difficult experiences of the traditional
diet. They overwhelmingly felt that the traditional diet is healthier than the current diet which
is based more on foods purchased at the market. This is due to the freshness of home-grown
food, the healthfulness of the traditional foods themselves, their medicinal properties, and the
importance of knowing where one’s food comes from. At the same time, women shared many
experiences of hunger associated with the traditional diet. Food supplies were insufficient and
there were not as many options available as women feel there are today. Many respondents
used the word mazburi or helplessness to describe their feeling towards eating the traditional
foods in the past. Thus, women associated hunger and boredom or lack or choice with some of
the traditional foods. Moreover, women’s gender roles also impacted their diet through tasks
that left women skipping meals, and household hierarchies that required young women to eat
after others were fed, or eat only the least desirable foods. These types of hierarchies are
weaker in the present, according to some respondents, and, in part, this is due to the greater
abundance of food supplies and variety offered by the markets. This may also be due to

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broader cultural changes, such as the greater rate of female students attending school, which
are shifting gender roles and household dynamics.
Understanding women’s experiences and impressions has shed light on the ways in
which the traditional diet and agricultural systems may not in fact be an ideal solution to
emerging concerns of environmental degradation and cultural loss in the Himalayan region.
Though the diet has many potential assets such as health and freshness, the work needed in
order to produce the foods is based on women’s labor, and the traditional foodways are also
associated with experiences of deprivation for women. Thus, the possibility of using the
positive attributes of the traditional ways, while ensuring that no subpopulation is burdened
through strategies to preserve and conserve traditional systems, must be explored more fully.

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C. Structural Conditions Related to Diet Change
A number of broader social and ecological changes have taken place over the course of
the respondents’ lifetimes that are related to the modifications in the diet described above.
This section discusses the four structural conditions described most frequently during the
interviews: declining crop productivity, roads and increased access to food markets, agricultural
work, and climate change. Other changes which were mentioned, but not developed as deeply
during the interviews, are broader socio-cultural shifts such as increased westernization,
urbanization, media, and migration. Overall, findings of this study in regards to structural
conditions related to diet change point to the need for further research due to the complexity
of the topic, especially in light of research in other regions that has shown that structural
factors affecting traditional diets are increasingly global (see Kearney 2010 Popkin 2006).
Roads and Market Access
An extremely important change that has taken place in the Himalaya since the 1960’s, and
that most respondents viewed as significant to food systems change as well almost all other
aspects of village life, is the construction of roads. Road development “provides exposure to
new techniques, methods, and ideas to modify traditional practices” (Rawat and Sharma 1997:
117), and in mountain areas, is considered critical for communities to have access to the types
of development taking place in other parts of India or the world. Rawat and Sharma (1997)
found that in the Almora district, just to the south of the Rudraprayag district, health care
facilities, government potable water supplies, electricity, telephone lines, and other
developments took place closer to the roads, while villages further from the road were not able
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to access these facilities as easily. Thus, roads are very significant to the development of the
Himalayan communities, bringing both positive and negative aspects of development.
Respondents attributed many major social, environmental and economic changes related to
the construction of roads, especially the routes to Kedarnath and Badrinath, two major
pilgrimage sites that bring travelers through Uttarakhand. All village sites in this study were
along these routes (see Figure 3.5). Divya Devi’s husband related his perspective on one of the
social impacts of the roads:
People traveled on foot and our village is on route from Kedarnath to Badrinath. During the
summer season the route is well traveled. The road was built in 1962 and after that we had
more access to the market. People became more aware about the rest of the world. But
communication to others in the village became less. They used to travel by foot so they
used to talk to each other a lot. But with increased communication to the outside world
communication to other villagers became less.
Roads have allowed villagers to communicate with many more people from outside the
villages, but according to this respondent, they have altered the way villagers communicate
with each other. Bairavi Devi discussed the difficulty of transportation in the past, recalling that
people had to walk everywhere and were unable to communicate using phones as they do
today, demonstrating some of the positive impacts of the roads. She continued by describing
ways in which social relations and communication have changed greatly over time:
In those days people did not have much time to socialize; only old people could talk to
friends etc. But younger generations could only talk when they went to the woods to
collect fuel. Then they could share their problems. Some programs were run by villages,
like Ram Lila, drama, etc. At that time people could recreate. But these programs were
held only when people did not have too much work in their field, or when animals came
down from pasture before winter. They planned events for those times. In those times
people had attachment to other family members but could not spend the time with them
because they were always working. Presently people do not have good attachment
between two families but they sit and talk.

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Though she did not specifically refer to roads as the cause of this social change, she
described a change in the way people socialize in more recent years, confirming that village has
life has transformed significantly since the time of her youth, and that these changes are
related to changes in transportation and communication.
Other aspects of life such as access to western medicine have changed due to road
construction. Divya Devi’s husband described the direct impacts of the roads on the local
health system:
Before the road was built if someone were to get injured no hospitals were available. There
were one or two hospitals but they were too far so people could not go there. So they
cured themselves at home. Some local vadiyars (traditional healers) were there who
prepared medicines from local jari-buti (local medicinal plants). If someone were to break
an arm or leg they would make local plaster. After the road was built people had better
access to the health system. The transportation was much less developed in the past.
People had no money for travel. So they went everywhere on foot. But presently every
house has a vehicle.
Respondents also felt that roads have changed the nature of commerce. Previously,
villagers built seasonal shops, assembled during the most popular pilgrimage months, June and
July, to earn an income from travelers who came by foot. With the construction of paved
roads, larger markets, restaurants and guest houses have taken over with their ability to
provide more goods and services than the smaller seasonal shops. These newer businesses,
more and more owned by urban populations, have grown in size and quantity with the ability to
transport large quantities of diverse goods into the hills.
Roads have had a tremendous impact on all aspects of life in the hills, and they have also
allowed development of and access to the markets which have directly impacted the hill diet.
Divya Devi’s husband stated that, “After the road was built, bigger shops were built close to the

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road so people could purchase daily needs… So after the road the food system also changed.”
His contributions to the discussion on roads is likely related to the fact that he runs a small
roadside tea stall and shop, and has lived in the same place for his entire life. Thus, he has
literally watched the construction of the road through his village. As a small business owner, he
has both positive and negative associations with the changes the paved roads bring, one of the
major changes being the increased access to the food markets.
All respondents emphasized the lack of access to outside food supplies in the past, and the
current dependence on those purchased supplies as a major change over the course of their
lifetimes. Women did not associate the dependence on the market as entirely positive or
negative – many of them appreciated the variety, the ability to purchase grain and not have to
process it themselves, and the availability of food when their yields were insufficient. Bairavi
Devi described some of the impacts of the markets she had noticed on the traditional diet,
particularly the variety and the ability to supplement cultivated food stocks:
These days people have money and they can buy whatever they want. But in the past
people did not have any money or less money, so they could not buy anything. Others may
have had some money but there was no market. So our diet was based on local resources.
Sometimes we bought koda (finger millet) and jhangora (barnyard millet) from another
family; other times we bartered one grain for another. Some families did not have milk and
ghee so they bartered their grain for dairy products…In those days we depended only on
our fields so however much we grew we had to manage for the whole year. But now if we
grow a small amount we can buy food from the market.
Though the markets in the hills are relatively small compared to urban markets in Delhi and
major cities, for villagers who have lived in the mountains for their entire lives, the small local
markets as well as the larger markets found 12 kilometers away in Ukhimath, contain an
abundance of new products. Before the paved roads, there were no markets at all, aside from

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seasonal shops for pilgrims, and most villagers did not have any access to income to purchase
from those seasonal shops. Women and families now have access to cash to purchase food in
the market due to the increasing rates of male outmigration in the Himalayan region, where
one or more male family members in many families move to urban centers in order to work and
send income home (Rasmussen and Parvez 2002) . The market is not only convenient, but it
gives a sense of choice and freedom from the repetitive experience of eating only what one
could grow, as Gauri Devi commented: “When I was little people ate the same thing every day.
Because there were no choices, no market. Today there are eggs, maggi, other types of foods.”
Thus, most respondents emphasized the transition from having been dependent only on their
fields to now purchasing most of their basic dietary needs from the market. This access to the
market has decreased hunger, has given women a sense of greater choice, and it has also
allowed for and contributed to the major shifts in the traditional diet discussed in the first
section above.
For example, as described in Section A, green leaves were an extremely important part of
the traditional diet. However, respondents reported that they very rarely gather green leaves
anymore, in large part due to the fact that vegetables are available all year round at the market,
and it is easier to purchase vegetables than to gather and clean small leaves. Also, due to the
availability of white rice, wheat flour, and pulses at the market, most respondents said they eat
much less of the traditional rice varieties, traditional millets, and pulses. They used to use little
cooking oil, and the oils they used were grown and pounded at home. Now, however, they use
refined oil regularly that is purchased at market. Similarly, masalas (spices) were previously
home grown and now they are often purchased.
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People’s changing perception of taste is also an important factor in the diet change. Foods
which were not previously available, such as packaged noodles, soda, and even refined wheat
flour, are now considered tasty, especially by the younger generation. Traditional foods are
considered less tasty, and are eaten less often. For example, focus group participants in
Kandara village stated that the younger generation does not like the taste of mandua (finger
millet), and that wheat is more versatile and can be used to prepare more items, such as
biscuits. This is an item that is not part of the traditional hill diet, but can be purchased in the
markets. These changing tastes may also be related to urbanization and westernization
brought about not only by roads, but by the presence of tourists, family members who migrate
to large cities to work and then return to the villages, and by the presence of television in many
homes. It is possible that contact with urban and/or western culture has increased the level of
shame in regards to traditional foods, and held store-bought foods in a more desirable light.
This reaction has been noted in studies of many indigenous peoples, including the Inuit of
Canada (Mead et al. 2010). In addition, many of these foods are associated with times of
hunger, and were eaten because nothing else was available, which is another reason that may
make them less desirable.
As discussed above, most respondents felt that the traditional foods are healthier than
store-bought foods. Yet, they also described the ease of availability of food supplies in the
market, facilitated by the construction of roads, as a major factor affecting the change in the hill
diet. Thus, roads and access to the market have allowed villagers to fill in the gaps in their diet
and avoid the hunger they experienced in the past, to access new tastes, and it has also
contributed to a shift away from the traditional diet. The markets do not provide traditional
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crops, and they provide a source of less healthy food, yet the traditional diet failed to provide
adequate amounts of food, making the markets critical for alleviating hunger. Women
repeatedly commented on the lack of availability of local varieties of pulses in the market, yet
they also gain from being able to purchase foods rather than rely only on what they can
cultivate. These tradeoffs present challenges for maintaining health and for transmitting
traditional knowledge, while at the same time ensuring adequate food supplies in the hill
region.

Decrease in Productivity
Many respondents noted that the productivity of their farms has been decreasing over the
course of their lifetimes. Focus group participants in Saari village estimated that their current
production gives enough food for three to six months of the year, whereas in the past they
grew enough to sustain their families for at least eight months. Due to this decrease in
productivity, they have become increasingly in need of external food supplies, which have
become more easily available in the local markets. Focus group participants in Saari gave soil
erosion as a possible explanation for the yield decrease they have witnessed. They explained
that though the crop types have remained the same, the quantity is less, possibly because they
get much more rain during rainy seasons now than they used to, leading to top soil erosion.
Maikhuri et al. (2001) also found that crop yields in Garhwal have been decreasing over the last
three to four decades due to declining soil fertility and increased soil erosion. This fertility has
declined due to shrinking access to forest products that are applied to fields (such as leaf litter),

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as well as changing cropping patterns that have increased soil erosion on the hillsides. Rao and
Pant (2001) similarly found that access to the forest is critical for traditional agricultural systems
in the Himalaya, yet forest cover has decreased drastically over the last 50 years. Forest cover
also prevents soil erosion, so a decrease in forest cover has also contributed to soil erosion,
ultimately affecting crop yields. Also, as male outmigration has increased, labor demands on
remaining female family members have increased, possibly contributing to a decrease in
productivity.
While traveling through the Chopta region, a tourist area close to the first group of villages
in which I conducted field work, I had the opportunity to visit a preserved forest area. My
guide explained that due to the forest preservation boundaries and rules set by the federal
government as well as local institutions, local people have lost some access to fuel and fodder
resources from the forest, as well as land for grazing, and for expanding agricultural fields. The
decrease in the number of cattle held by village families due to a loss of grazing space has led to
a decrease in the amount of farmyard manure. Manure from cattle is the most important input
to increase soil fertility aside from leaf litter. Thus, forest preserves have also contributed in
part to the decrease in crop productivity. Moreover, as more space has been created for wild
animals through the forest preserves, their populations have increased, and they regularly
enter fields and take crops. For example, on a daily basis, the dog who lived at the home of my
host family would patrol the boundaries of the agricultural fields to scare off the wild langur, a
species of monkey that entered the family’s fields regularly and ate crops.

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Forest management policy in India and the Indian Himalaya has a long and complex
history which I will touch on briefly here. Before the British arrived in India, villages managed
their land themselves through community institutions (Sarin 2001). Colonial rule brought a
series of forest management policies in which communal lands and “uncultivated” lands
including forests became property of the central government under British rule. These policies
restricted forest access by local people, leading ultimately to decades of struggle between the
British rule and mountain communities over forest access rights (Sarin 2001). The Indian
government (after India gained independence in 1947) continued with the centralized
management of forests which restricted access to locals, and mountain communities continued
to protest. The famous Chipko movement, in which mountain communities organized to resist
the felling of their forests and to resist federal forest management policies, came to epitomize
the decades of struggle of Himalayan communities to protect their forests (Guha 1989). In
recent years, the federal government has increasingly handed forest management
responsibilities over to community forestry institutions (CFI) made up of local people, whose
main function is to protect the forests through the formulation and enforcement of forest rules
(Agarwal 2010). These rules pertain to such activities as fuel and fodder collection, and the
gathering of other forest produce. Though the CFIs ideally allow community members to
develop their own rules, community members can be restricted from gathering needed
materials due to the decision of the CFI to protect the resource at a particular time (Agarwal
2010). These rules, combined with decreased forest cover and federal and state forest
preserves, can limit villagers’ access to the forest, and can also affect crop productivity.

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Focus group participants in both groups in Kandara gave an explanation for the decrease in
crop yield that they have also experienced, which is related to a decrease in the amount of land
available for each family to cultivate. They felt that their fields had become less productive
because as the population has increased, the land has become more and more divided, leaving
less land for each family unit. Demographics play an important role in the management of all
natural resources, as Rao and Pant (2001) found in their study of forest cover in the central
Himalaya. They found that the population density in the region increased by almost 20%
between 1963 and 1996 (2001). This increase in population density and the cultural practice of
dividing land between the sons of a family is another contributing factor in the decreasing crop
yield for family units, leading families to seek out other food supplies such as the local markets.
The reliance on foods purchased at the market ultimately contributes to a change in diet.
Due to reasons such as forest management policies, declining soil fertility and soil erosion,
and decreasing farm size for family units, respondents shared that they have experienced
decreased crop productivity, which has in part led them to depend more heavily on purchased
food supplies from the market. This shift has contributed in part to the diet change in the hills.
Work
Another important factor affecting diet change that emerged during the interviews is
the actual agricultural work involved in the production of traditional foods – the amount of
work involved in cultivating and processing traditional grain, and the overall desire to work in
the fields. Generally, women do the majority of agricultural work and food preparation in the
middle hills (Agarwal 2002). Work burdens on women have increased in recent years due to

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increasing rates of male outmigration (Rasmussen and Parvez 2002). Though male
outmigration in the Himalayan region has been taking place since the 1800’s (Gururani 2002), it
has increased to rates as high as 40% of the male population in the mountainous regions of
South Asia (Rasmussen and Parvez 2002). In the interviews and focus groups, the ways in which
migration has affected women’s experience of agricultural labor were not emphasized by the
respondents, though based on informal conversations with members of the NGO I worked with
as well as other researchers in the region, and on previous studies of migration patterns in the
area, it is a significant factor affecting the increased work burden on women.
Anjali and Amita Devi emphasized the challenge of farming in the hills due to the steep
inclines, the need for high human labor input as well as cattle, and the low productivity of the
hill farming. Eka and Eesha Devi, both in their 70’s, were working in their field with several
younger women, in their 20’s and 30’s, when my guide and I arrived to speak with them. They
emphasized that the land is not productive, and though they work many hours every day, they
get little in return. They also felt that as women they have no other options for livelihood or
other activities to become involved in, so they continue to farm even though it is not very
productive. My guide added that families are looked down upon if they leave their fields
fallow, which some families do because they no longer rely on crops from their fields to survive,
so some women continue farming even though the return can be quite minimal for the amount
of work they invest.
The lack of other economic opportunities for mountain communities is due to the
relative lack of industry in the region, and affects men and women both. Bairavi Devi recalled

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that people did not have a choice but to cultivate their fields and engage in agricultural work,
but that in the present people are “growing crops without interest,” yet at the same time there
are minimal opportunities to work outside the home. This is the case not only for women, but
employment for men outside the home, which is highly valued and necessary now that families
need cash income to purchase food supplies and other necessities, is difficult to find. One of
my first evenings in the villages I visited a roadside tea stall with my guide, just before sunset. I
noticed that the only people working in the few shops and tea stalls clustered by the road were
middle-aged men, while there were several young men playing games, drinking tea, and
socializing. Many are unable to find employment outside of their homes. Meanwhile, women
of all ages were carrying baskets of fodder and heading home to feed the cattle and prepare
the evening meal. Culturally, collecting fodder for cattle, agricultural tasks, and food
preparation are women’s tasks (Agarwal 2002). Though men may not be employed outside of
the home, according to my guide, it is not culturally acceptable for men to participate in
“women’s work.” During the final focus group in Sari village, the woman who hosted us in her
home pointed to her son who had a Master’s degree, but was unable to find work, so he stayed
at home. A younger woman in her 30’s, in an informal conversation, shared that she had
completed her high school education as well as her two years of higher education, and had
enjoyed working outside the home for the few years she had the opportunity to. However, due
to changes in her family life, she was not able to continue. After that, she stayed home and her
daily routine became that of the typical hill woman’s work day as described above. She found
this unsatisfying and wished for some opportunity to work in other capacities as well as earn an
income of her own.

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Aside from general feelings of disinterest in agricultural work, and the intense challenge
of the work itself, women also felt that certain types of traditional crops required work that
they no longer needed or wanted to do because they no longer depended on their fields for
sustenance. For example, most women, though they listed it as one of the healthiest and
tastiest foods, do not cultivate jhangora (barnyard millet) for human consumption anymore.
This is directly related to the fact that jhangora requires more pounding to remove the seed
from its husk than any other grain. Thus currently jhangora is only cultivated for fodder for the
cattle by most respondents. Bairavi Devi explained further why certain mota anaz (traditional
varieties of grain) were no longer cultivated:
Some seeds are left out. Some types of rice, wheat, etc we do not like because these
varieties are more difficult to separate grain from husk. ..Some wheats were very long,
not that tasty, so people stopped growing it. These mota anaz are more productive but
people left it because they are difficult to work with.
Madhu Devi reported that her family eats more vegetables from the market such as
okra and eggplant, and fewer green leaves, because the green leaves are too much labor. A
great amount of time is required to gather enough green leaves to prepare a dish that would
feed the family. On the other hand, most women felt that rice, no matter the variety, is more
labor intensive to cultivate than mandua (finger millet) because rice fields require weeding at
three separate times per season, while mandua only requires one. However, the difficulty of
threshing and the work required to gather or process certain traditional foods are reasons why
they are no longer cultivated, and ultimately occasionally eaten, or no longer eaten at all.
During my field work, I observed that hill women, especially younger women, worked
constantly – they were gathering fodder early in the morning, preparing meals throughout the

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day, working in the fields, and again in the evening gathering fodder for the cattle. Though
most women, especially younger women, agreed that this was the case, many of the elder
women said that they feel women, in general, work less than in the past. It is difficult to know
whether this is because older women do not work as heavily or as much as younger women in
general, or whether the actual time that women work has deceased. Oma Devi recalled that in
her youth she felt like life was only work - washing clothes and dishes, cleaning the animal shed,
giving food to animals. She said she felt like a machine – no rest, no stopping. She would
pound the grain by hand, make roti, and thresh rice. She would make ghee and buttermilk.
She felt that these days life is better for women – more freedom, more rest, and less work. She
shared that she personally has less work in the fields now because in her family men earn the
money and women shop for food, leaving women in her family with less agricultural work.
However, she is in her 60’s, so her experience of the household workload may be different than
younger women in the household who are responsible for more daily tasks. However, in
general, access to the market has relieved many women of the pressure to cultivate all of their
families’ food needs.
The challenge of agricultural work in the hills, the types of work involved in cultivating,
processing, and preparing the traditional foods, and the relationship women have to
agricultural work has impacted the hill diet. Overall women reported less interest in farming
than in previous years, related to the fact that their families currently depend less on their
fields. Decreasing productivity, increased education, and minimal opportunities to work
outside the home have contributed to a feeling of frustration with farming and a decreased
desire to carry out agricultural work. This change in attitude towards farming is related to the
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increased use of market products as well. Finally, some traditional crops require greater
amounts of work to process which has caused women to stop growing some of them, and
ultimately dropped these foods from the hill diet. Thus, women’s experiences with agricultural
work, as well as the challenges of the work itself, are critical to take into consideration,
especially for research and advocacy which promotes the conservation of traditional
agricultural systems.

Climate Change
In recent years there has been increasing recognition of global climate change in
scientific research and popular conversation (Mall et al. 2006). Due to the importance of
agriculture in the Indian economy as well as in the livelihood of millions of small-holder
farmers, research on climate change in India has emphasized the impacts on crop production
and food security (Mall et al. 2006). The increasing unpredictability of the weather and changes
in temperature and rainfall have caused researchers and policy makers to begin to focus on the
many ways that the impacts of climate change on agricultural production in India could be
mitigated, such as the development of new crops, and the importance of understanding the
knowledge and perceptions of small-holder farmers themselves in regards to climate change
(Chaudhary and Bawa 2011). In a study of villagers in 250 different Himalayan households,
Chaudhary and Bawa found that more than 60% of respondents experienced a change in the
onset of monsoon, as well as warmer overall temperatures. Respondents also provided

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detailed information on the changes in bloom time of specific plants, and the appearance of
new agricultural pests, all of which they associated with climate change (2011).
Though detailed data on the perceptions and impacts of climate change were not
collected in this study, general perceptions of warming temperatures emerged in most of the
interviews. Most respondents in this study felt that the climate in the hills is changing and
becoming warmer, and described how several aspects of life, including agriculture, diet, and
clothing, have changed due to warmer temperatures. Many described the change in traditional
clothing - how people all used to wear woolen clothing year round, but no longer do. Indu Devi
recalled that in the past, “We didn’t have different clothing for different seasons. We always
wore local wool. Wool acted as an insulation. If we got wet we wouldn’t get cold.” However,
many respondents felt that it is now too warm in the summer to do so. I observed, however,
that older women generally still wear traditional woolen clothing, even in the summer, but
younger women wore saris (traditional Indian dress made from cotton, silk, or polyester, often
very light fabric) or salvar kameez (long shirt over a loose fitting pant, also made with light
fabric). So it is also possible that younger generations do not want to wear the traditional
woolen dress, and that their choice of clothing is not based on temperature. It is also possible
that though they are too warm in the summer months, older generations are uncomfortable or
unwilling to begin wearing saris or salvar kameez.
Several respondents also attributed certain changes in the hill diet to a warming climate.
For example, in the traditional health system that was the primary health system until recently
in the hills, foods are described as either heating or cooling. Narenderji, the traditional healer,

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described an entire system in which traditional foods and preparations are categorized by the
way they affect the body in terms of temperature (hot/heating or cold/cooling foods). He
reported that, “Elders decided or advised which foods were hot and which were cold. People
ate grains and pulses all year round,” while other foods were restricted to specific seasons.
Furthermore, during the monthly festival of Tyohar, specific foods were chosen that would
prepare the body for the current season, such as heating foods in January. He added though,
that, “the hills used to be a cooler climate so there was no problem,” but presently certain
traditional foods make peoples’ bodies feel too hot. Some respondents described how several
green leaves - marcha, cholai, and kandali - which were eaten very regularly in the past, are no
longer eaten, in part, due to their excessive heating effect on the body, attributed to a warming
hill climate. Lalita Devi described allergic reactions to mandua that she had not experienced
previously due to what she perceived as excessive heat in the body after eating them. Thus, in
connection to the experience of a warming climate, several respondents described the
excessive heat associated with certain traditional foods, especially green leaves. This excessive
heat is one of several reasons why green leaves are no longer preferred foods in the diet,
pointing to a possible link between climate change and a shift away from the traditional diet.
Aside from the experience of certain traditional foods affecting the body differently due
to perceived changes in the climate, some respondents described difficulty in growing
traditional varieties, which they associated with a changing climate. Eka Devi reported that she
used to grow many different varieties of pumpkins but no longer is able to because the climate
is different, and they don’t grow as well. She mentioned two varieties, gol armyoth and twama
armyoth, which she no longer cultivates due to the difficulty associated with changing weather,
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such as hailstorms in which the crop gets ruined. She has also noticed increased insect
problems she does not remember having affected her crops in previous seasons. Chaudhary
and Bawa documented similar accounts in their interviews with villagers in Himalayan
communities, reporting that 54% of respondents in their study had observed new pests due to
a warmer climate, especially villagers living in higher altitudes (2011). These accounts show
that a changing climate could be one factor that would affect the ability of people to maintain
their traditional agricultural practices, and, therefore, their traditional diet. More research in
the study area is critical to identify traditional varieties that are able to withstand the changes
in climate that local people are experiencing.
Section Summary and Discussion
Several structural conditions were described during interviews that are related to
changes in the hill diet. The major conditions that emerged were: decreasing crop productivity;
roads and access to the market; agricultural work; and climate change. Declining soil fertility,
soil erosion, forest policy, education, ability to find employment, warmer temperatures, and
the construction of roads are all external factors that are related to the changes in diet
described in the first section. These factors are not directly causal, but are part of the broader
context in which personal food decisions are made, what is available to choose from, and what
is possible to even grow. Women and villagers as a whole also exert agency in the process of
diet change. Thus, an understanding of systemic changes as well as individual behavior can
lead to a fuller understanding of the context in which traditional foods are becoming less a part
of the hill diet.

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6. CONCLUSION

This study has three main conclusions in regards to women’s experience of diet change
in Uttarakhand, corresponding with the three research questions raised in the Introduction.
The first question sought to understand the ways in which the hill diet has changed through the
experience of elder women. The results of the study show that respondents are experiencing
transition in their diet, away from traditional crops and foods, and towards an increasing
reliance on food purchased at the local market and produced by the industrial food system.
However, the results are not clear as to the extent of consequences due to this transition, such
as diet-related diseases, or food sovereignty. Respondents, however, generally reported that
they do generally feel that their health has declined as the diet has changed, aspects of the
ecosystem are degrading, significant changes in agricultural practice are taking place, foodrelated knowledge is not being passed down to new generations, and they are becoming more
dependent on an industrialized and globalized food supply characterized by the concentration
of capital in a small number of entities. This suggests that Himalayan communities may be at
greater risk of negative consequences if the trend towards a dependence on industrial and
packaged foods, foods higher in sugar, and a loss of traditional agricultural and food knowledge
continues.
The second research question sought to understand women’s experiences and views of
the traditional diet. This study has found that the associations of the traditional diet with
experiences of hunger and a lack of choice contribute directly to decisions women make to

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purchase food supplies from the market. Gendered experiences, such as the restrictions from
“better” foods women faced in the past, may also contribute to a sense of freedom and choice
when women can purchase desired food supplies from the market, and eat what they choose at
home (this may also be related to cultural changes in gender roles). Though respondents feel
that they may be losing the health benefits of the traditional diet, the ability to purchase these
supplies has allowed respondents to avoid previous experiences of hunger, has allowed women
to eat desired foods, gives respondents the sense of choice in their diet, and may be seen as a
tradeoff they are willing to make. Given that the traditional diet is associated with a sense of
deprivation for women, and that the traditional agricultural system is based primarily on
women’s labor, bringing women’s experiences to the center of any initiative to preserve the
traditional diet is critical in moving towards a system that does not disproportionately burden
women. As hill communities, researchers, and policy makers develop and plan for the future of
hill agricultural and food systems, the protection of traditional knowledge and of the
environment must not take precedence over the improvement of women’s lives.
Finally, the third research question sought to explore how changing structural
conditions have affected diet change in the hills through the experience of elder women. This
study has found that structural factors play a role in a community’s ability to access their
traditional foods, and may also play a role in affecting perceptions of food in general. The
construction of roads has affected Himalayan communities in many ways. Access to food
markets has been critical for mountain communities to be able to purchase new foods which
are replacing traditional foods to a significant degree, and this access has been possible through
the construction of roads. Other factors, such as the degradation of soils, related to local forest
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management, agricultural work, and climate change may also affect the respondents’ ability or
desire to cultivate the traditional crops, which in turn makes these crops less available. People
then become more dependent on purchased food supplies and ultimately consume less of their
traditional foods on a regular basis.
The diet of the respondents has changed in numerous and significant ways. In general,
almost all aspects of the diet - greens, grains, spices, pulses, etc. - have changed from a
complete reliance on traditional crops to an increasing reliance on purchased food supplies. In
the past, respondents relied heavily on greens that were gathered. They were eaten in at least
one to two meals throughout the day, and in every season a different variety of greens were
available. They were an extremely important part of the diet prepared as a side dish eaten with
a grain, cooked with grains as a main dish, or eaten raw. Greens were used to fill the stomach
when other foods were not available and were considered healthy and high in energy. Though
families still eat some greens, many of the varieties, especially the ones which are gathered
from pastures or cleared land, are not collected and/or eaten anymore due to a number of
reasons, including the work involved to gather and prepare them, and the association of these
foods as foods eaten during times of hunger. However, the loss of these greens from the diet is
a loss of a rich nutrient source. Gathered greens are considered an extremely important source
of micronutrients and minerals, and are also able to be gathered without significant ecological
disruption through agricultural activity (Mnzava et al. 1999; Narayanan and Kumar 2007).
Though it is not clear whether the respondents are experiencing health problems due to a
decrease in the consumption of greens, it is possible that people will feel long-term effects.
Moreover, the minimal input required to grow the greens, as they basically grow on their own,
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means that this food source has minimal impacts on the environment. Thus, the loss of this
food source is also a loss of an ecologically sustainable food practice. At the same time, the
labor for gathering these greens has traditionally fallen with women. Thus, in evaluating the
importance of green leaves in the diet, gendered labor roles must be taken in to account.
The respondents described how the hill diet in the past also depended on a number of
traditional grains and their varieties, broadly referred to as mota anaz by Garhwalis, including
mandua (also called koda), jhangora and koni (finger, barnyard, and foxtail millets); marcha
(amaranth); jao (barley); dhan or sati (rice), and gehun (wheat). They were eaten, traded with
other families, stored for long term food supply, and used for seed for the following season.
The mota anaz were used for a number of traditional dishes and eaten at each meal, though
when grain supply was low families experienced hunger and depended on green leaves and
dairy products since no markets were available. Though all respondents said they continue to
cultivate a number of traditional varieties, families no longer depend on the mota anaz for their
yearly food supply, and have transitioned to a diet mainly based on wheat flour and rice
purchased from the market, which is grown industrially in the plains of India. This seems to be
the most significant transition in the diet of the respondents, in that a complete reliance on
traditional grains is increasingly replaced by a complete reliance on rice and wheat. This
transition has allowed respondents to avoid the significant experiences of hunger in the past,
yet rice and wheat are also seen as less healthy, and the transition has contributed to a
significant decrease in the consumption of traditional grains.

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Long term consumption of white rice and wheat, to the exclusion of other whole grains,
is connected to diet-related diseases in other parts of India (Kataki 2002). Thus this trend may
indicate future health risk for hill communities. Though hill communities are still much more
physically active than urban dwellers, it is not clear how this significant change in diet could
affect people’s health in the long term. Also, the traditional grains have been developed over
the course of hundreds of years and aside from being high in nutrient content, also have
medicinal properties. This knowledge could be useful to the hill communities, especially those
who have less access to medical clinics. The grains represent hundreds of years of knowledge
in the selection, storage, and preparation of the grains as an agricultural product and as food.
The loss of these grains represents not only potential health impacts, but also a significant loss
of cultural dishes prepared using these grains, and of knowledge. At the same time, the
presence of these grains in the hill diet has relied on women’s work, and has not provided
adequate supplies of food, which has greatly impacted women’s diets. Thus, simply considering
traditional grains as an asset in the diet does not tell the entire story.
Another aspect of the diet that respondents report some change to is in the
consumption of fruits and vegetables. Women recalled that their families only had access to
the vegetables and fruits they grew in their gardens, which varied with the seasons. During the
rainy season the yield was the greatest, but at other times of the year families would collect
greens, wild foods, or not eat vegetables at all, using salt, onions, ghee and other elements of
the diet to eat with roti. Some fruits, such as figs and peaches, still grow but are not used in the
regular diet anymore; others were gathered wild and are no longer collected; and still others
are newer to the region such as apples and malta, a type of orange. Some varieties of
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vegetables are simply not found anymore because they are not grown or they cannot grow due
to climatic changes. Families have stopped eating as many green leaves as their access to other
more desirable market vegetables has increased. The results indicate an increase in vegetable
consumption on the whole, which is generally considered to be healthy, though many women
felt that homegrown fruits and vegetables taste much better than those from the market.
Vegetable consumption and cultivation, however, seems to have changed less than greens,
grains, and pulses. It is not clear from this study if respondents are losing a significant amount
of traditional vegetable varieties, and therefore agricultural knowledge, due to an increasing
reliance on store-bought vegetables. This aspect of the diet may represent a positive transition
for the respondents in that families are able to consume fruits and vegetables all year, women
are not limited in vegetable consumption, and many culturally appropriate types of vegetables
are available for purchase.
The traditional hill diet also includes many types of locally grown pulses (lentils and
beans) with a diverse array of different varieties. Pulses are generally cooked as a main dish
during the afternoon meal, as a stew, and eaten with rice or roti. Though families continue to
grow and eat these local pulses, the quantity grown and eaten has decreased, and families now
increasingly purchase pulses from the market. The market does not carry local varieties of
pulses, and women feel that the market pulses do not have the taste of the locally grown crop
or the pulse varieties from the past. Also, some varieties of local pulses are no longer found in
their fields, and dishes were prepared in the past that were based on these local varieties that
are no longer eaten regularly, though many are remembered fondly. Pulses are an important
source of protein in most Indian diets, and the fact that respondents are able to purchase
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pulses from the market indicates that they have access to a protein source. However, the fact
that traditional varieties that are no longer cultivated and cannot be purchased at the market
could indicate a loss of traditional agricultural knowledge, and indicates a structural barrier to
accessing traditional foods. A decrease in the preparation of traditional pulse-based dishes
could lead to a loss of Garhwali cultural cuisine, and as with other aspects of the diet, an
increased reliance on purchased supplies could lead to a loss of food sovereignty for hill
communities. How to maintain this critical knowledge and sovereignty without overburdening
women, or any other population, and whether these are indeed priorities for the villagers, is
important to understand more fully.
All respondents said that traditionally their families had a large number of cattle and
therefore plenty of dairy products in their diet such as dudh (milk), butter, ghee (clarified
butter), chanch (buttermilk) and dahi (yogurt). These products were used to prepare a wide
variety of main dishes and sweet dishes, and ghee was used for frying. Presently, due to a
number of changes socially and environmentally, families have fewer cattle and eat less dairy
products. Dairy products, though less linked to survival today, are still considered healthy and a
very important part of the diet. However, respondents indicated a decrease in the
consumption of dairy products, which is quite different than India as a whole and most
transition diets globally that are moving towards an increasing consumption of animal products.
The health impacts of this transition are not clear from this study, and certainly require further
inquiry.

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Another related and significant situation is the impact of forest management on the
community’s ability to maintain cattle, and the impact of soil fertility due to a decrease in
cattle, which in turn affects crop productivity. Though many of the families I visited during my
fieldwork were stall feeding their cattle, which could lead to easier access to the manure (not
having to collect it over wide pasture or forest areas), the total decrease in the number of cattle
has led to an overall decrease in cow manure. Ultimately, the ability of hill communities to
grow the crops they prefer, to maintain traditional varieties, and to produce yields that can
sustain them, depends in great part on soil fertility. Thus, the transition in regards to dairy
products represents a greater and on-going tension in land use in the hills that ultimately
impacts the viability of traditional agricultural systems.
Women recalled that they gathered many types of wild foods on a regular basis to
supplement the family’s diet. Many fruits and other types of plants, including medicinal plants,
were gathered from the forest while women worked. Though people occasionally gather
produce from the forest in the present, most families do not gather either food or medicine
regularly from the forest anymore for a number of reasons including changes to forest
regulations, access to the market to purchase food supplies, and cultural shifts in which
gathering wild foods is associated with times of hunger. From an ecological standpoint, it may
be positive that respondents are no longer gathering as much edible or medicinal plant material
from the forests – this may allow forests to regenerate and be preserved. However, in terms of
health, the diversity that wild food adds to a diet is incredibly valuable (Kuhnlein and Receveur
1996). Though markets may carry a wide selection of packaged foods that were not previously
available, it is unlikely that processed foods would be as beneficial to one’s health as wild foods,
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gathered fresh from the forest. Respondents also shared a perception of fresh food as
healthier, yet they also valued the convenience of purchasing items from the market. The
extent to which a community’s health is compromised by the lack of wild foods is not clear
based on the results of this study. However, the loss of knowledge is certainly problematic.
Knowledge of edible plants is passed down from generation to generation, but if one
generation stops collecting and eating those plants, the next generations may lose the centuries
of trial and error in discovering how to identify, collect, and prepare these valuable resources.
Traditionally, oil was not used very often in hill diets due to the difficulty in processing
oil seed by hand and the abundance of ghee. Now families use more oil in their cooking, such
as refined sunflower or soy bean oils, because it is easily available at the market. Oil seed
plants also were part of mixed planting groups, and these traditional planting systems are
becoming less common. The increase in refined oil consumption may lead to long-term health
consequences, and the loss of knowledge of mixed plantings incorporating oil seed plants as
well as the plant varieties themselves may be a negative consequence of this diet shift.
Previously, families drank water, milk, buttermilk, home-made juice and herbals teas.
Presently, though families still drink water, milk, buttermilk and some home-made juice, chai,
sodas and store bought juice have become a greater part of the diet and herbal teas have
become much less common. One significant concern in regards to the increase in chai, soft
drink, and juice consumption is the greater level of sugar intake. It is possible that over time,
respondents will experience diet-related diseases associated with high sugar consumption such
as diabetes. Though the exact amount of sugar that the respondents consume was not

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gathered in this study, the trend may indicate the importance in assessing the quantity of sugar
hill communities consume, and the potential risks for diet-related diseases. Moreover, herbal
drinks and home-made juice may have medicinal properties that soft drinks and store-bought
juices do not. It is likely that many of the traditional herbal preparations and juices were not
only used to refresh and as enjoyment, but were also used to either treat or prevent illness.
The loss of this knowledge and the health benefits of this knowledge may be a negative
consequence of this diet shift.
Finally, families still grow some masalas, but often purchase powders from the market,
and even have access to some varieties which they did not have in the past, such as boxed spice
mixes. However, many respondents feel the store bought masalas do not have the same or as
good of a taste as those home-grown and pounded on the silabata (large rock used for
grinding). Though spices do have some medicinal properties, it is not clear how harmful to
respondents’ health it is to transition to store-bought spices, but it is possible that the use of
store-bought spices could eventually make knowledge of the cultivation and preparation of
spices at home obsolete. Thus, loss of knowledge could be a concern in regards to this change
in the diet.
Certain aspects of the diet have changed more than others – the substitution of
purchased wheat and rice for the wide variety of traditional grains is quite dramatic, while the
types of vegetables eaten have not changed as significantly. However, the general trend for the
aspects of the diet discussed above is away from traditional varieties and homegrown foods,
and an increasing reliance on foods purchased at market. Masalas, which were grown and

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processed at home traditionally, are now purchased in powder form by many families; soft
drinks and packaged noodles are purchased at the market; and ghee made from families’ cattle
has been replaced by store-bought refined vegetable oils. Many of these trends reflect some of
the patterns of diet change worldwide that are leading to increasing rates of diet-related
disorders. They also reflect a departure from traditional systems based on local ecological
knowledge to an increasing reliance on “expert” knowledge in the form of industrially farmed
rice and wheat and packaged foods. Both of these trends could lead to negative consequences
for hill communities in terms of health, cultural preservation, knowledge, and sovereignty (in
this case the ability to provide for and control one’s own food supply). At the same time, the
cultivation and preparation of the traditional foods relied heavily on women’s work, while
women simultaneously experienced significant levels of hunger on this diet. The challenge of
developing a vision of an ecologically and socially sustainable diet, balancing these often
contradictory ideas, is something that requires input from a diversity of community members,
including women and men villagers as well as the scientific community.
Returning to Popkin’s five patterns of the nutrition transition, the respondents have
described a transition that may place their communities moving from pattern two, “famine,” to
pattern three, “receding famine” (see Table 2.1). Pattern two seems to describe the
experiences women recalled during the interviews – hunger was common, women suffered
more from deficiencies, cereals were predominant (though arguably the diet was very diverse
due to the use of gathered greens, wild foods, and the high diversity of traditional grain and
pulse varieties), and the landscape was completely rural. In the respondents’ descriptions of
the present, many aspects of pattern three reflect their experience. Pattern three matches
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with some of the findings of this study for the present diet such as increased fruit and vegetable
consumption, cooking technology such as clay stoves, increased population, and some
migration to urban areas, as well as some urbanization in the mountains themselves (roads,
electricity, telephones, etc.). However, the results of this study indicate that the transition
taking place in the respondents’ experience does not reflect completely the descriptions of
pattern three societies. For example, pattern three indicates an increase in animal protein, but
the respondents described a decrease in the consumption of dairy products, and meat was not
actually mentioned, though it is possible that meat is eaten occasionally. Secondly, the farming
practices in the hills, though they are undergoing transition as well, have not become
industrialized as pattern three indicates, to the extent that they have in the plains of India or in
developed countries. This is likely due to the difficulty of utilizing machinery to cultivate the
hillsides, and the expense of purchasing chemical inputs. Though this study certainly shows a
diet change based on foods that are industrially grown in the plains, farming practices have not
changed to the extent that consumption patterns have, again pointing to the ways in which the
study population do not fit neatly into pattern three. Third, cooking technology has not only
“advanced” to the use of clay stoves as pattern three describes, but many families are now
using propane tanks and gas stoves, pressure cookers, and other manufactured utensils
characteristic of urban families. These items are much easier to transport than large
machinery, and can be purchased in the larger towns in the hills as well. Finally, there is very
little industrialization in the hills, though pattern three indicates industrialization. The
development of industry is very difficult due to the topography, though the area is rich in
natural resources (Sati 2005a).

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Part of the reason that the respondents’ experience does not match completely with
pattern three is that these patterns have been developed from a broad and/or national
perspective. The types of variation in different subpopulations in not accounted for in this
model (Popkin 2002). However, I would argue that an important reason why a single pattern
does not match completely with the respondents’ experience is due to the aspects of mountain
communities that set them apart from other regions of India. The topography, the relative
isolation and difficulty in communication and transportation, and the preserved forest and wild
spaces that are not commonly found in the plains or coastal areas of India may be reasons that
explain the unique transition experience that the respondents have described. This is an
important factor that should be taken into account when seeking to address health or
ecological problems through policy, development, or education initiatives. Mountain
communities may not need the same types of interventions as plains or urban communities. As
research and policy goes in to developing solutions for the “double burden” that India is
experiencing, it is critical that the full range of transition experiences of hill communities be
taken into account.
As illustrated by the second conclusion, the richness of individual impressions and
experiences of diet change is an important resource for this understanding of diet change in a
local context. This can provide information on the ways in which the nutrition transition in the
Himalaya may differ significantly from other parts of India, or may not fall in to a prescribed
pattern. The views people have towards the traditional diet may affect their food choices, and
may contribute to the significant diet changes that are taking place in ways that may be
contradictory. On the one hand, I have discussed positive changes that facilitate women’s
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emancipation and food security in this study. On the other hand, these data reveal problematic
elements of this transition diet for ecological sustainability and the preservation of traditional
knowledge. Thus, in order to more deeply understand the unique nutrition transition
mountain communities may be undergoing, structural conditions and individual actions are
both critical. Women’s lived experience in regards to the traditional diet that was studied here
helps to shed light on the reasons that people may also be contributing to the change in their
own diets, and ways they may also resist the changes. They also help to reveal important
gender dimensions that might not otherwise have emerged, and that are critical to take in to
account in order to address both women’s and men’s experiences with diet change.
Impressions of the traditional diet that were shared in this study reveal the diet as both
asset and burden. Respondents overall felt that people were healthier in the past and that the
traditional diet contributed in part to the healthfulness of their communities. Respondents also
attributed healthy characteristics to many traditional foods including high energy content,
nutrients, freshness, and medicinal properties, characteristics that were not attributed to storebought foods. Though respondents generally seemed to accept the tradeoff in the loss of
health in store-bought foods, they still emphasized the importance of healthy food. It is
possible that were healthy and/or traditional varieties available at the local markets, people
would purchase those as well.
On the other hand, respondents also associated the traditional foods with the
experience of hunger in the past, and this experience of hunger is intimately connected to the
significant changes in diet Garhwalis are experiencing. Foods which are associated with hunger,

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eaten out of necessity, are not considered desirable in the present when other options are
available. Thus, many traditional foods, due to their association with hunger and necessity, are
no longer desirable, and this perception is a factor important to the context of diet change as it
motivates people to choose store-bought or new foods.
Another important factor that emerged in this study in regards to women’s experiences
of the traditional diet is gender. Women ate differently in the past due to factors such as
gendered power dynamics in the household, gendered work roles, and reproductive health.
Women, especially young women and daughters-in-law, were often not given what were
considered “better” foods and not presented with choices in their diet. Women also
experienced hunger when food supplies were not sufficient for their families, and when they
spent entire days working in the field or forest. Many of these gendered ways of eating have
changed. Women now eat what they choose and eat enough, and though they may still serve
other family members first, most families have enough to eat so that young women do not
have to go hungry. They can also eat desirable foods such as rice and wheat. However, these
experiences reveal the relationship between women’s work and hunger, of working all day with
no food or very little food, and the importance of these experiences in shaping the ways
women adjust to and support changes to the traditional diet. If the traditional diet is
associated with hunger, restrictions, and a heavy work load, the desire and willingness to
accept and develop new foodways may be enhanced.
Due to negative experiences of the traditional diet, it is possible that simply making
traditional foods more available would not induce people to purchase them; they may be more

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interested in eating foods that they associate with the freedom of choice and the ability to eat
for taste rather than just filling their stomachs. It is also possible that respondents are truly
supportive of the diet changes and do not want to return. However, the widely held perception
of the health of the traditional crops, and the appreciation of fresh, home-grown food that also
emerged in this study implies that to lose the traditional crops completely would not be
satisfactory for the respondents. Thus, it is possible that an initiative that changes people’s
negative associations with the traditional foods, and that provides a space for positive
experiences with these foods, would prompt people to be more enthusiastic to choose these
foods, rather than be forced to eat them, or choose something else. One initiative that was
suggested by members of grassroots organizations working in this region during my fieldwork is
providing traditional crops, foods, and dishes at tourist locations. Thus, tourists would have the
opportunity to experience the culinary aspect of Garhwali culture, while the local people would
have the opportunity to see others, urban travelers and even foreigners, appreciating their
traditional foods. This is one initiative that may help to create new and positive associations
with the traditional foods.
In addition to the importance of individual impressions of the traditional diet, the third
conclusion highlights the importance of understanding structural conditions affecting diet
change. This understanding can lead directly to identifying the areas for intervention in cases
where the negative consequences of diet change are clearly identified. For example, though
most respondents felt that the traditional foods are healthier than store-bought foods, they
continued to purchase food supplies that they identified as less healthy, foods which also were
not part of their traditional diet. They described the availability of food supplies in the market,
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facilitated by the construction of roads, as a major factor prompting the change in the hill diet.
Thus, roads and access to the market have allowed villagers to fill in the gaps in their diet and
avoid the hunger they experienced in the past, to access new tastes, and it has also contributed
to a shift away from the traditional diet. However, as Mead et al. (2010) found in their study of
the Inuit, identifying the lack of access of healthy foods in the local markets led to health
interventions such as increasing access to healthy foods in those markets. Similarly, the fact
that traditional foods such as grains and pulses are not found at the local market could point to
the possibility of making those foods available at local markets, developing packaged food
items utilizing traditional crops, or other ideas in which traditional foods would be more readily
available for purchase for hill communities.
Another structural factor respondents mentioned that has decreased the availability of
traditional foods is decreasing yield. Due to reasons such as forest management policies,
declining soil fertility and soil erosion, and decreasing farm size for family units, respondents
shared that they have experienced decreased crop productivity. This has, in part, led them to
depend more heavily on purchased food supplies from the market. Addressing issues of soil
fertility, forest management, and land use conflicts could lead to the possibility for households
to cultivate greater quantities of traditional foods.
Respondents also described the impact that agricultural work has on changes in the
diet. The challenge of agricultural work in the hills, the types of work involved in cultivating,
processing, and preparing the traditional foods, and the relationship women have to
agricultural work has impacted the hill diet. Overall women reported less interest in farming

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than in previous years, related to the fact that their families currently depend less on their
fields. Moreover, decreasing productivity, increased education, and minimal opportunities to
work outside the home have contributed to a feeling of frustration with farming and a
decreased desire to carry out agricultural work. This change in attitude towards farming is
related to the increased dependence on market products as well, which has contributed in
large part to the change in the hill diet. Finally, some traditional crops require greater amounts
of work to process which has caused women to stop growing them, and ultimately dropped
these foods from the hill diet. Thus, women’s experiences with agricultural work and the
nature of the work itself are critical to take into consideration when advocating to maintain
traditional foods in the diet. Perhaps, if agriculture were economically viable, women would be
able to earn an income from the immense amount of work they already do. Moreover, the
development of appropriate technology for hill agriculture in relationship to traditional crops
would allow hill households to more easily cultivate their crops. If there were a market for
traditional crops, this would allow hill communities to maintain traditional varieties, while
earning an income. This, of course, could be problematic for many reasons, one being that
women may continue to bear the burden of the work. This could be mitigated by the
reintegration of men into agricultural work in the middle hills. Secondly, the communities could
end up selling all of their products to “health-conscious” urban markets and not have access to
their own foods. However, this is one possibility for addressing the ways in which agricultural
work has led to a change in the traditional diet.
Finally, the results show that a changing climate could be one factor that would affect
the ability of people to maintain their traditional agricultural practices, and, therefore, their
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traditional diet. More research in the study area is critical for identifying ways in which
Himalayan communities can adjust more quickly to climatic changes.
The results of this study show that the respondents are indeed undergoing a diet
change, and possibly a “nutrition transition.” Many of the traditional foods that are considered
very healthy are being dropped from the diet, while respondents have described an increasing
reliance on purchased food supplies, which they perceive as less healthy. It is not clear to what
extent the respondents are experiencing negative consequences such as diet-related diseases.
However, there is a significant loss of knowledge taking place, ecological problems associated
with shifting agricultural practices, and the potential loss of food sovereignty for a community
that has previously been able to provide for themselves, now being dependent on a globalized,
industrialized food system. At the same time, women report decreased hunger and the
possibility for lighter workloads as their diet transitions. Thus, as hill communities, researchers,
and policy makers seek to address concerns of environmental degradation and the loss of
traditional knowledge in the hills, women’s lived experience must be central to future planning.
Ecological sustainability and preservation of tradition must not take precedence over women’s
agricultural workload and dietary needs, nor can the burden for these goods be placed on
women. This study highlights the need to make gendered experience central to the visioning of
an ecologically healthy and socially just future in the central Himalaya.

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Further Research
This study has revealed many places for further research that may be of benefit to hill
communities. The results of this study did not provide information as to the actual diseases or
health problems that the respondents now experience, and the association of these diseases
with diet change. Thus, assessing whether the diet change has or likely will cause an increase in
diet-related diseases, from a gendered perspective, is critical. Furthermore, though significant
research has been done on the ecological problems associated with changing agricultural
systems (Maikhuri et al. 1996; Negi et al. 2009), an assessment of knowledge loss (knowledge of
agriculture, food preparation, health, and identifying wild foods, for example) and of food
sovereignty is also critical. Though simply purchasing food does not inherently mean that a
community is not sovereign, the opportunities for hill communities to have ownership and
decision making power in the globalized, industrial system must be more clearly understood, so
as to avoid the situation where hill communities have no other options but to purchase foods,
yet have no control over what foods are sold in the local markets.
Secondly, developing economic opportunities is critical for the survival of hill
households. Earning an income allows families to purchase needed supplies for the markets.
However, economic opportunities are limited. Research into the possibilities of developing
products and services, that women can and would like to also participate in, is critical for
developing viable opportunities. Moreover, the possibility for integrating men back into
agricultural work could lead to a decreased burden on women, more productivity if more
people are involved, and the development of products that could be marketed within and

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outside the hills. This may contribute to raising the value of agricultural work in the eyes of all
hill people, and may address the increasing male outmigration that can be stressful for
households.
Finally, a deeper understanding of the structural conditions affecting diet change in the
hills is critical. Several key factors such as ecological change, forest management, and state and
federal government policy in regards to research and food distribution priorities, play a
significant role in diet change. Exploring media such as television, as well as cultural changes
brought about by contact with travelers and by returning migrants, are also areas that can
provide rich opportunities for understanding the complex process of diet change. Investigating
these structural conditions in more detail, and the unique ways that mountain communities
may be affected, will lead to a greater understanding of the specific areas in which policy and
programs can have a positive impact on the hill diet.

137

APPENDICES

138

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTION GUIDE
1. What are some major changes you have noticed in your lifetime here in your village?
2. Can you describe your daily routine? How has it changed over time?
3. What types of foods did you eat on a daily basis when you were growing up? (Breakfast?
Lunch? Dinner?)
4. Where did you obtain these foods from?
5. Can you describe different varieties of (grains, greens, vegetables, etc) that you/your family
used to eat? Can you describe different varieties of (drinks, spices, wild foods, etc) that
you/your family used to eat?
6. How did the types of foods cultivated and eaten differ by season?
7. Are any of these foods not eaten anymore? Why?
8. Can you describe the types of foods you and your family eat on a regular basis nowadays?
Where do you obtain this food from?
9. Can you describe any new foods that you eat now that were not available in the past?
Where do obtain these foods from?
10. How do you choose what to prepare for your family’s meals? Are there any foods that are
more difficult/easier to prepare?
11. What types of foods were given in the past when someone became ill?
12. What types of foods were given to women during pregnancy? What were the reasons for
giving these foods to pregnant women?
13. Were there any special foods for children? How did you decide what foods to give to
children?
14. What types of cooking utensils did you use regularly in the past? How have these changed?

139

APPENDIX B: FOCUS GROUP QUESTION GUIDE
1. What are some major changes you have noticed in your lifetime here in your village?
2. Can you describe your daily routine? How has it changed over time?
3. What types of foods did you eat on a daily basis when you were growing up? (Breakfast?
Lunch? Dinner?)
4. Where did you obtain these foods from?
5. Can you describe different varieties of (grains, greens, vegetables, etc) that you/your family
used to eat? Can you describe different varieties of (drinks, spices, wild foods, etc) that
you/your family used to eat?
6. How did the types of foods cultivated and eaten differ by season?
7. Are any of these foods not eaten anymore? Why?
8. Can you describe the types of foods you and your family eat on a regular basis nowadays?
Where do you obtain this food from?
9. Can you describe any new foods that you eat now that were not available in the past?
Where do obtain these foods from?
10. How do you choose what to prepare for your family’s meals? Are there any foods that are
more difficult/easier to prepare?
11. What types of foods were given in the past when someone became ill?
12. What types of foods were given to women during pregnancy? What were the reasons for
giving these foods to pregnant women?
13. Were there any special foods for children? How did you decide what foods to give to
children?
14. What types of cooking utensils did you use regularly in the past? How have these changed?

140

APPENDIX C: Verbal Consent Script for INTERVIEWEE
You are being asked to participate in a research study entitled Gender and Diet Change in the
Central Himalaya. As many changes are taking place in the Himalaya in regards to agricultural
systems and food, it is important to understand how the traditional diet is changing; and the
reasons for these changes. The purpose of this study is to learn about the ways that women,
particularly elder women, view the changes to the traditional diet of the region; and to
document women’s health perceptions of the traditional diet. This understanding, as well as
local knowledge about the traditional diet, can help to prevent negative health or ecological
consequences associated with recent changes.
There are no known risks to this study. During this interview, you will be asked a series of
questions about the types of foods you ate in the past; how your diet has changed; and your
perceptions about the health benefits of the traditional diet. This discussion will last
approximately one hour.
The information you share will be used in academic articles and presentations. Your identity
will be disguised so that your name is not associated with any information you provide. You will
be asked your permission to record the interview simply for the sake of being accurate and
capturing your precise comments for our records. There will be no compensation for
participating in this study.
You have the right not to participate, to refuse to answer any questions, or to withdraw at any
time. Your confidentiality will be protected to the maximum extent allowable by law. To
ensure confidentiality, once the interview has been transcribed your name will be removed
from all materials pertaining to you. Data will be secured in the primary researcher’s office and
will only be accessed by the researchers and the Internal Review Board at MSU.
The primary researcher has no conflict of interest related to this project. She does not stand in
any way to financially benefit from your participation in this study.
If you have any questions about this research study, you may contact Dr. Wynne Wright by
phone (517)-884-1372; email wrightwy@anr.msu.edu; or by regular mail at Michigan State
University, 330B Natural Resources, East Lansing, MI 48824.
If you have questions or concerns about your role and rights as a research participant, or would
like to register a complaint about this research study, you may contact, anonymously if you
wish, the Michigan State University’s Human Research Protection Program at 517-355-2180; fax
517-432-4503, email irb@msu.edu, or by regular mail at 202 Olds Hall, MSU, East Lansing, MI
48824. By participating in this interview you indicate your voluntary agreement.

141

APPENDIX D: Verbal Consent Script for FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANT
You are being asked to participate in a research study entitled Gender and Diet Change in the
Central Himalaya. As many changes are taking place in the Himalaya in regards to agricultural
systems and food, it is important to understand how the traditional diet is changing; and the
reasons for these changes. The purpose of this study is to learn about the ways that women,
particularly elder women, view the changes to the traditional diet of the region; and to
document women’s health perceptions of the traditional diet. This understanding, as well as
local knowledge about the traditional diet, can help to prevent negative health or ecological
consequences associated with recent changes.
There are no known risks to this study. During a group discussion, you will be asked a series of
questions about the types of foods you ate in the past; how your diet has changed; and your
perceptions about the health benefits of the traditional diet. This discussion will last
approximately one hour.
The information you share will be used in academic articles and presentations. Your identity
will be disguised so that your name is not associated with any information you provide. You will
be asked your permission to record the discussion simply for the sake of being accurate and
capturing your precise comments for our records. There will be no compensation for
participating in this study.
You have the right not to participate, to refuse to answer any questions, or to withdraw at any
time. Your confidentiality will be protected to the maximum extent allowable by law. To
ensure confidentiality, once the discussion has been transcribed your name will be removed
from all materials pertaining to you. Data will be secured in the primary researcher’s office and
will only be accessed by the researchers and the Internal Review Board at MSU.
The primary researcher has no conflict of interest related to this project. She does not stand in
any way to financially benefit from your participation in this study.
If you have any questions about this research study, you may contact Dr. Wynne Wright by
phone (517)-884-1372; email wrightwy@anr.msu.edu; or by regular mail at Michigan State
University, 330B Natural Resources, East Lansing, MI 48824.
If you have questions or concerns about your role and rights as a research participant, or would
like to register a complaint about this research study, you may contact, anonymously if you
wish, the Michigan State University’s Human Research Protection Program at 517-355-2180; fax
517-432-4503, email irb@msu.edu, or by regular mail at 202 Olds Hall, MSU, East Lansing, MI
48824. By participating in this discussion you indicate your voluntary agreement.
142

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143

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