# Dabbawalas \[Indian lunch delivery\]- how do they do it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 28, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555 "2014-02-28T23:15:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/21 "2014-03-02T20:40:49Z")
So interesting! Thank you for your post. I had a feeling there might be a cultural lore against cold food involved. The system really shows human inventiveness in its infinite variety! People are amazing with what they come up with to solve a problem! 😃 BTW, I knew vaguely of this system but I had the wrong idea - I though food was being delivered by local restaurants (also, is “tiffin wallah” the same thing?) ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/22 "2014-03-02T20:42:46Z")
An excellent reply, **Acsenray.** Would it be too harsh to say, in brief: “it’s tradition, religion, and ignorance, supported by cheap manual labor”? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/23 "2014-03-02T20:57:16Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > An excellent reply, **Acsenray.** Would it be too harsh to say, in brief: “it’s tradition, religion, and ignorance, supported by cheap manual labor”? Ignorance? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/24 "2014-03-02T21:03:36Z")
Given the climate and socio-economic conditions (unreliable power grids, etc., questionable hygiene practices of people outside the home, varying household food strictures), it just makes sense for Indian culture to have a deeply ingrained suspicion of food coming from outside the home or food that hasn’t been freshly cooked from fresh ingredients specifically for that meal. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/25 "2014-03-02T21:16:45Z")
This might have been implied in my earlier post, but I think it should be explicit. A lot of social taboos in India are centered on good, not only the ingredients and conditions in which it prepared, but also the 
 “Spiritual purity,” let’s say, of the people who have prepared, handled, and served the food and the people with whom you are sharing a meal. (That’s one reason why in some parts of India, restaurants are commonly staffed by Brahmins, because no customer would question the spiritual purity of good prepared by Brahmins.) For ordinary people who are working in diverse offices, it might not be an explicit or conscious consideration, but merely the original source of generations of teaching that home-cooked food eaten alone at your own desk is always best. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/26 "2014-03-02T21:29:14Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > No one eats coldcuts, chips, cheese 
 Even we Westerners know you’re better off avoiding these. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/27 "2014-03-02T22:16:03Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Ignorance? > [@Acsenray](#): > > Coldcuts, chips, cheese, and bread are not considered “proper” food and not palatable to Indian food culture. They’re western-style snack foods, and can be: 
(c) considered unwholesome, (d) considered children’s food, 
 > > Moreover, there is a tremendous suspicion regarding food that has been stored for any length of time, particularly in a refrigerator. My wife had a landlady who would unplug the refrigerator every night, because she thought it was poisoning the food
 > > When they have visited, they wouldn’t so much as touch a loaf of sliced bread that was purchased more than a day prior. They certainly don’t like the idea of preserved meats (cold cuts) or aged cheese
 > > Fruit is commonly eaten as a snack, not as a meal in and of itself. Salads are not popular in India; vegetables are preferred cooked in spicy dishes. Especially outside the home, raw vegetables are not considered hygienic or safe. While some objections to these foods are cultural and tradition, tempered by lack of health standards, I would say the underlying reason for others, according to nutritionists, is indeed ignorance. Refrigerators do not spoil food; raw fruits and vegitables, if property handled, are highly nutritious, and cold cuts, cheese and day-old bread are not poison. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/28 "2014-03-02T22:30:10Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Given the climate and socio-economic conditions (unreliable power grids, etc., questionable hygiene practices of people outside the home, varying household food strictures), it just makes sense for Indian culture to have a deeply ingrained suspicion of food coming from outside the home or food that hasn’t been freshly cooked from fresh ingredients specifically for that meal. FWW: In defense of the home-sourced, delivered food, some of the meals shown on the videos look really delicious! We have a new owner for a small quickstop store near me, a family with obvious Indian cooking experience. I usually stock up with curries and nan from them, so I certainly don’t have a bias against Indian cooking! Psst
they make great coldcut sammiches, too! ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/29 "2014-03-02T22:46:33Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > An excellent reply, **Acsenray.** Would it be too harsh to say, in brief: “it’s tradition, religion, and ignorance, supported by cheap manual labor”? > [@Acsenray](#): > > Ignorance? > [@Musicat](#): > > While some objections to these foods are cultural and tradition, tempered by lack of health standards, I would say the underlying reason for others, according to nutritionists, is indeed ignorance. Refrigerators do not spoil food; raw fruits and vegitables, if property handled, are highly nutritious, and cold cuts, cheese and day-old bread are not poison. Ascenray, thanks for your extremely informative reply. Exactly the kind of background I was hoping for. Musicat, the people who want food from home for all the possible reasons Ascenray listed are not ignorant. They are making choices based on values different from yours. ---
**Author:** ![arseNal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@arseNal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arseNal)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/30 "2014-03-02T22:58:39Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Refrigerators do not spoil food; Maybe they don’t spoil it, but in many parts they do lose power an awful lot 
 > [@](#): > > raw fruits and vegitables, if property handled, are highly nutritious That’s a huge if. Westerners are advised quite strongly to avoid most raw anythings when visiting India. You’d have to be kinda nuts to eat a salad except maybe in an expensive restaurant, from what I recall. > [@](#): > > and cold cuts, cheese and day-old bread are not poison. No one said they thought it was poison, it’s just not agreeable to many Indian palates. Even if they’ve been here in the US for many years, a turkey on rye just isn’t something that most of the many Indians I know consider good eats. Cold food in general (except maybe for desserts) just isn’t a big thing as far as I can tell. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/31 "2014-03-02T23:32:27Z")
> [@congodwarf](#): > > [try this one](http://www.theperennialplate.com/episodes/2013/03/episode-115-dabbawalla/) > > I had never heard of this until about 10 minutes ago. This video is short and to the point. I’m fascinated. This is a great video. I love that the food couriers see themselves as fulfilling an important role (which they are), namely, getting home-cooked food to children and loved ones, food imbued with a mother’s/wife’s love. A sense of mission can make even a simple challenging job meaningful. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/32 "2014-03-02T23:36:50Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > Musicat, the people who want food from home for all the possible reasons Ascenray listed are not ignorant. They are making choices based on values different from yours. Some are due to values, religion, custom, and if you read my response very carefully, I acknowledged that. I also claimed that some reasons were due to ignorance, and I listed those directly from **Acsenray’s** post. If you believe that refrigerators spoil food and properly handled fruits, veggies, sliced meats and breads are bad for you, you have a beef with the FDA and nutritionists, not me. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/33 "2014-03-03T00:06:50Z")
I didn’t say that Indians thought that “properly handled raw fruits, vegetables, and day-old bread are bad for you.” Indians eat raw fruits all the time and some vegetables like cucumber, but they don’t trust that they will be “properly handled” outside their own homes (or the home of someone in their social circle). Most other vegetables, they have a cultural aversion to eating raw. This is again due to rational cultural history, and even now you would be a fool to go to India and eat anything raw outside someone’s home. This has developed into a cultural taste that is biased against things like salads. Leavened bread is a recent cultural import and they have incorporated into this cuisine by treating it like native unleavened flatbreads. It’s eaten on the day it is made or bought. It’s not because they are ignorant of something. It’s because they have, for originally rational reasons, developed a cultural aversion to stored food. It has become a matter of cultural preferences or taste. As far as refrigeration is concerned, almost none if the country has much of any experience of reliable electrical power. Combine that with a cultural aversion to stored foods, and it’s an understandable aversion to refrigerated foods. And regardless of cultural preferences, sliced meats \*are \*bad for you. I mean I like all kinds of preserved meats, but they’re not wrong about that. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/34 "2014-03-03T00:13:01Z")
There’s a difference between believing that something will likely kill you in short order (which is what the FDA concerns itself with) and something that is generally bad for you. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/35 "2014-03-03T00:31:08Z")
And I already said that sliced meats are most commonly cow and pig, which are shunned by the majority of the population. That leaves, what, turkey? It’s not native to the country, it’s hard to get (every Christmas one market in Calcutta imports like 12 turkeys), and most Indians who taste turkey think it’s bland, dry and awful. The meats commonly eaten in India are goat and chicken. Sliced, processed goat isn’t common anywhere. And even if you could get sliced, processed goat or chicken, how would that develop cultural cachĂ© when it’s so easy to get spiced, flavorful, tender goat and chicken curries delivered to your office from home? (For the record, goat curry is the best meat dish ever in the whole world.) Sandwiches are available here and there, but they’re rarely the cold cut and cheese type sandwiches. They’re more like closed, toasted sandwich pockets filled with something more like curry. Cold meals are just generally not part of the cultural preference. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/36 "2014-03-03T03:11:38Z")
Fascinating post, **Ascenray** - thanks for taking the time to explain the background! ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/37 "2014-03-03T03:20:20Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Some are due to values, religion, custom, and if you read my response very carefully, I acknowledged that. I also claimed that some reasons were due to ignorance, and I listed those directly from **Acsenray’s** post. If you believe that refrigerators spoil food and properly handled fruits, veggies, sliced meats and breads are bad for you, you have a beef with the FDA and nutritionists, not me. As I understand it, it’s not so much that they believe that refrigerators spoil food, but that refrigerators are unreliable. And they are, if the electric power itself is unreliable. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/38 "2014-03-03T03:29:52Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Moreover, there is a tremendous suspicion regarding food that has been stored for any length of time, particularly in a refrigerator. Strange
 the Indian guys where I work have no compunctions about bringing all sorts of delicious smelling leftovers for lunch most days. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/39 "2014-03-03T03:35:09Z")
It’s not just India. In China, workers generally get a two-hour lunch break (woe unto he who plans a conference in China without the long break!) during which they expect to go home for a hot meal and a nap. Lunch is the main meal of the day, and a cold lunch would be considered odd and unsatisfying. Nobody thinks it’s going to kill you, but it’s just not what you expect. It’d be like having a bowl of cereal for dinner or calling an ice cream cone a meal. While there are lots of restaurants and China has a pretty strong restaurant-going culture (unlike India), it gets expensive, there are no health inspections, and it’s hard to trust restaurants to use good ingredients. Different strokes for different folks. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555/40 "2014-03-03T04:03:20Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Strange
 the Indian guys where I work have no compunctions about bringing all sorts of delicious smelling leftovers for lunch most days. You live in America? Why would you expect they wouldn’t? Indians who have emigrated to America live very very differently than their parents back in India. Electric power and refrigeration are reliable, there are no cooks, peons, or dabbawalas running your errands for you. You likely don’t have a stay-home-spouse who can spend so much time cooking. Even if you do have stay-at-home spouse, that spouse has a lot more shit to do during the day than she would have back in India, where the sweeper comes twice a day (and also mops and maybe washes dishes), the greengrocer comes to your door daily, the cook helps you prepare meals, your mother-in-law (who lives with you) looks after the kids, the laundryman comes to your house to pick up dirty clothes and drop off clean ones. Your apartment building might have its own peon to run small errands and carry messages. You might very well have a driver who not only drives you around, but handles routine maintenance of your car. Indians in America have to adjust very fast to a very different—in many ways more stressful and lonely—life. They quickly learn to take advantage of technological conveniences and very quickly change their expectations about what they eat, when, and where. As someone suggested above, a lot of things about middle-class life in India center on the fact that labor costs almost nothing. When you need something to be done, very often the cheapest and most convenient way to get it done is to pay someone to do it for you. That’s exactly the opposite of how things are in America, where the most expensive way to get things done is to hire a service worker to do it. So, Indians who don’t know much about Western life have to deal with a huge shock that suddenly they have a million things to do all by themselves and no time in which to do it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dabbawalas-indian-lunch-delivery-how-do-they-do-it/682555.md?page=3)