In a very humiliating series of events for the government, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) had to eat their own words when they were forced to delete a recent tweet of theirs.

The Health Ministry had recently tweeted a message to promote healthy, nutritious eating but apparently, the move backfired since the picture accompanying it spelled out another story and they received a lot of backlash from the Twitterati.

What Went Wrong?

The picture showed the outlines of two different women, with different figures. While one silhouette which was visibly larger, curvier (read: fatter) contained eggs, meat, bread, burgers, doughnuts, fries and fizzy drinks and beer the other was lean (read: slimmer) and contained only fruits and vegetables, and the accompanying message read “What is your choice?”

One would think that it’s just another way to promote healthy, clean, junk-free eating habits but on closer inspection, it became apparent that this tweet was an underhanded way of promoting vegetarianism.

The aim of the tweet had all of a sudden become, “What is your choice? Would you rather be fat and a non-vegetarian or thin and a vegetarian?”

Equating eggs and meat with obesity? Is this the most anti-science, anti-logic government ever?

Why are we inflicting an egg and meat-free diet now? Is it another criteria to pledge your allegiance to the nation now? Do we really want to be schooled on our diet too now?

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Only a few minorities like Jains, Brahmins eat exclusively vegetarian food. Over 70% Indians including Hindus are non-vegetarian, so who and what was the MoHWF’s propaganda aiming at essentially, we’ll never know.

Why Were People Angry and Disappointed?

Another range of accusations hurled included that the tweet promoted stupidity of highest order. People were shocked to see how ignorant the government could be.

Fish has the essential vitamins, and Omega-3 fatty acids, eggs are known to contain protein and healthy carbohydrates and reduce cardiovascular risks, and meat has iron, magnesium, zinc. All of the ingredients needed for a balanced diet. So we can all safely assume that Health Ministry should fire their fact checker ASAP.

Promoting a well balanced, nutritious diet, debunking food myths and encouraging a healthy lifestyle is what the Health Ministry is responsible for, and this vegetarianism campaign is exactly opposite of that.

I mean you guys literally ran an entire campaign to make India eat under the National Egg Coordination Committee. I can hear the phrase, “Sunday Ho Ya Monday, Roz Khao Ande!” blaring in my head. How ignorant can you get all of a sudden?

If this disappointing display of facts wasn’t enough, the Health Ministry further blatantly, encouraged body shaming.

Disappointingly, the larger silhouette wasn’t even close to someone being morbidly fat or obese. It was just a naturally curvy woman, who wasn’t even unfit but our government had been successful in ridiculing and fat-shaming it.

Indian women have a pear-shaped body according to studies and it’s only natural for women to have curves. It was saddening to see that our own government isn’t able to understand and respect that.

People also pointed out the fact that an essentially middle-class man’s daily meal didn’t contain apples, avocados or kiwis so apparently the government maybe tweeted that advice to only 1/4th of the Indians who could actually afford it?

It also doesn’t help the ministry’s case that the graphic was just stolen off the internet anyway.

Seriously? You couldn’t even afford to hire a graphic designer to design your own posters now? That’s the humor in the situation, ladies and gentlemen, our government just used a stock image to validate an unscientific, unintelligent claim.

It’s time for the government to act like a government. It needs to stop forcing their judgements and unintelligent notions on us.

Indians have changed, our habits have changed and it’s time the government changes its ways too.


Image Credits: Google Images

Sources: Indian Express, Wikipedia, Firstpost


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