Definition
Meal: A 'meal' is composed of one or more readily eatable (generally cooked) items of food, the usually major constituent of which is cereals. The meals consumed by a person twice or thrice a day provide him/her the required energy (calorie) and other nutrients for living and for pursuing his/her normal avocations. A 'meal', as opposed to 'snacks', 'nashta' or 'high tea', contains larger quantum and variety of food. In rare cases, a full meal may contain larger quantity of non-cereal food. Even then, if the quantum of food in a plate is heavy as a meal, the contents of the food plate will also be considered as a 'meal'. Sometimes the contents of a 'nashta' may not be very different from the contents of a 'meal'. The difference in quantity will therefore be the guiding factor for deciding whether the plate is to be labelled as a 'meal' or a 'nashta'.
A person rendering domestic service (like cleaning utensils, dusting and cleaning of rooms, washing linen, carrying water from outside, etc.) to a number of households during the daytime gets some food from each of the households he/she serves. Although the quantum of food received from a single household may, by quantity, be far less than a full meal, the total quantity of food received from all the households taken together would often, if not more, be at least equivalent to a full meal. In this particular situation, the person will be considered to be consuming one meal every day under 'meal taken away from home'.
