Indians order 137 Chicken Biryanis on Swiggy every minute, killing thousands of chickens

 December 27th, 2022

In India, ordering meals online has become a standard element of the dining experience. Many Indians favour ordering their favourite foods from food delivery apps after a long workday. None of the popular cuisines available on applications like Swiggy, however, can compare to the popularity of biryani. The most popular meal on the online food delivery service Swiggy is once again chicken biryani, according to the seventh edition of its annual trends report. The report claims that for the eighth consecutive year, chicken biryani has topped the list of most-ordered dishes on the app.

The surge in popularity of this dish

The popularity of chicken biryani on the charts is not particularly remarkable. After all, the majority of us enjoy a bowl of long-grained, fragrant rice with tender pieces of chicken. “The dish showed its ‘Asli dum’ with a mind-boggling 137 Biryanis being ordered per minute; that’s 2.28 Biryanis per second,” read Swiggy’s annual trends report. At the same time, other popular goods on Swiggy were chicken biryani, masala dosa, chicken fried rice and paneer butter masala.

Slaughter of chicken to meet the demand for biryani

However, what is noticeable is that most of the popular dishes feature meat as a core ingredient. This is causing the deaths of thousands of animals to meet the demand for chicken biryani and chicken fried rice. This compels you to wonder whether a more sustainable food source can be explored with vegan meats to replace chicken in the much-loved dish.

Similar trends from an earlier report in 2020

Online delivery service Swiggy reported in 2020 that biryani was requested more than once every second while home-cooked food was one of the most ferried dishes that year. As contactless food became the standard in the pandemic-hit year, India's favourite meal, chicken biryani, once again cemented its position. There were six orders for chicken biryani for every vegetarian order, said reports. According to data from the fifth iteration of Swingy's annual "StatEATstics" report, almost 3 lakh new users made their Swiggy debut by ordering a chicken biryani.

“While we delivered 5 times as many orders to ‘Home’ addresses compared to ‘Work’ addresses between January and March, that number rose to 9 times as many Home orders vs. Work orders in April and May," the report mentioned at the time.

This shows that the disturbing trend of meat has only surged and humane food sources are still a dream for many.

Health risks from animal meat

Research indicates that consuming animal products like milk, eggs, and flesh might be just as harmful to human health as smoking, and that eating processed meat increases our risk of getting cancer. Numerous vegan foods are high in plant-based protein, which doesn't have the negative consequences on health that protein produced from animals has, making it a much better alternative.