Emirates will stop serving 'Hindu meal' on its flights
 

Should have been done ages ago in my opinion.
Many vegetarians order the Hindu meal assuming that it is vegetarian and then get upset with the crew.

I have seen this happen on several flights to and from India .


Dubai-based Emirates on Tuesday said it will no longer serve "Hindu meal" on its flights, and passengers can order from a variety of other meals served aboard in advance to meet their religious dietary requirements.

"As part of our continuous review of the products and services available to customers, Emirates can confirm that it will discontinue the Hindu meal option. We constantly review our offering, taking into consideration customer uptake and feedback. This helps us improve service efficiencies," an airline spokesperson said in a statement to Khaleej Times.

The airline serves Indian Vegetarian Meal (AVML) for vegetarian passengers. It incorporates flavours from the Indian sub-continent, and can contain all types of vegetables, fresh fruit, dried fruits, legumes, dairy products, tofu, cereal, grains and vegetarian gelatine, but it does not contain any type of meat or by-products, fish, shellfish, eggs or animal gelatine.

In addition, it also serves vegetarian Jain meal (VJML) for the Jain community who are purely vegetarian.

"Food and drink form an integral part of any Emirates flight experience and our menus are created by leading chefs to reflect the culture and preferences of Emirates' diverse customer base. We have a wide variety of special meals that can be ordered in advance to cater to our customers with medical or religious dietary requirements, including our Hindu customers," the airline said.

Source

It is disappointing if you ask me, because that eliminates a certain chicken offering from the menu, which usually provided assurance to Hindu Non Vegetarians while traveling. Some like me are not fond of sea food, and EK doesn't serve pork anyway.

Good move in my opinion, way too many food options

Being reinstated due to popular demand on social media!

I wish they could change the term to Indian Non vegetarian (Chicken ) meal or even Hindu Non vegetarian meal..

I have never seen the term Hindu meal used for non vegetarian food anywhere in India ( especially for airline food )
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Unless you know what it means , the term Hindu meal creates confusion.Many will think it is vegetarian .As far I know EK does not have vegetarian options on the menu (main course ) in Y unless you order in advance.

I have seen passengers who order this getting very upset and going hungry as they might end up being able to eat only the salad.

​​​​​​The crew do they their best but the veg options are limited anyway .



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I agree. Many in India who eat non vegetarian food eat only chicken . As I said earlier , they have just announced that they will carry on keeping it in the menu.

However I think they should not call it just a Hindu meal . At the very least call it an Indian non vegetarian meal like all Indian carriers /caterers.

A "Hindu meal" is permitted to contain chicken/lamb/goat/fish/eggs, but is not required by the religion to contain any of these things!

Some airlines offer multiple options that are actually the same meal. So whether you request kosher or Hindu or vegetarian or gluten-free, they might serve you the same (vegetarian with rice) meal. In other words, Emirates could have easily avoided this publicity---they don't need to produce many different meals, just print many different labels!

Again, you may expect that the Hindu meal will have chicken, perhaps based on prior experience, but it is not a requirement.

The problem is that Hindus traveling on non-Indian airlines are sometimes concerned that they will be served beef. In many cases, India-based TAs automatically request Hindu meals for passengers with Hindu names. So removing the Hindu meal option would have made certain customers nervous and possibly caused EK some loss of business in the Indian market.


PS The term "Indian non-vegetarian" (suggested in previous posts) may make sense within India, but it does not make sense anywhere else and is not used by foreign airlines. That is because "Indian" refers to a style of cooking, not content. There are Indian Muslims and Indian Christians, so a beef curry would qualify as "Indian non-veg".
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I am so relieved. The Hindu meal (or asian veg,) is what I always choose on morning flights, just because i hate airline omelets.

Hindus do eat omelets of course, but somehow they never get them served on board an airplane.

The main reason for that is eggs are considered "non-vegetarian" by almost all practicing vegetarians in India (most of whom are Hindus) though I notice eggs being included in vegetarian diets by more and more vegetarians nowadays.

Yeah but the Hindu Meal contains chicken, so it's not exactly a veg meal

Multiple religious meals is part of the package when serving clients from India. Was it really so low-volume that it deserved elimination? Especially considering that competitors (BA, LH, etc) offer this option.

It's probably easier to combine them on the back-end (as SeeBuyFly alludes to) on routes where a separate Hindu meal has cost issues in Y.

On those routes, perhaps give them the same meal as AVML - or make one of the regular menu options Hindu-compatible (folks who don't like spicy food would still have the other options).

For context: On US routes in Y, they offer AVML as one of the regular menu options. Works well except for the occasional hiccup.

The fact it was non-veg which confused people was more likely the issue, as other posters indicated. I spend about half the year in India, though am not Hindu or Indian by origin, yet when I see "Hindu Meal" I expected it to be veg.

Hmm, good idea, actually!