It's a tweet that opened up a can of worms, but the debate has existed for centuries in Indian society. On Wednesday, Rocky Singh of Highway on My Plate fame put up a post on the Twitter handle he shares with Mayur Sharma, his vegetarian co-host on the TV show, which said that mushrooms are not plants. They are fungi and hence closer in relation to the animal kingdom. So if you eat mushrooms and call yourself a vegetarian, you might want to reconsider that label.

Singh had a two-fold intention in making this statement. One was to rile Sharma up in a light-hearted manner. But the other is more significant. He explains, "Mushrooms lack chlorophyll, [the photosynthetic pigment] which broadly defines plants. And these days, when people are becoming quite vociferous about their vegetarianism while attacking meat eaters, I wanted to point out that if you are that rigid, then you should follow your own protocol since otherwise, it's hypocritical."