Swasti Launches Swad Anusar – A First-of-its-Kind Book on Recipes, Culture, and Nutrition in India

BusinessWire India

New Delhi [India], September 22: On the occasion of Rashtriya Poshan Maah, The Centre for Strategic Communications for Public Health at Swasti, The Health Catalyst, along with the South Asia Social Norms and Agency Learning Collaborative, Community Action Collab, and AvianWe., has launched Swad Anusar – a unique book that brings together 49 traditional, nutritious recipes from across India while weaving in powerful insights on culture, climate resilience, and the social norms that shape what we eat.

The book, curated by Kamalkoli Majumdar, Vineha Tatkar, and Shrirupa Sengupta, with editorial support from Siddharth Chaitanya, is the outcome of a year-long journey that began with Swasti’s Swad Anusar social media campaign in 2024. The campaign saw 16 partner organisations and communities join hands to gather recipes from schoolchildren, farmers, homemakers, frontline health workers, and everyday cooks across the country.

Emerging from a digital campaign, the idea blossomed into a book that not only preserves recipes but also amplifies the voices and stories of communities, showing how food traditions embody health and resilience.

Speaking at the launch, Ms Shrirupa Sengupta, Director, Centre for Strategic Communications for Public Health, Swasti, said, “Nutrition in India is more than a plate of food. It is a reflection of our social norms, our environment, and our collective wisdom. Swad Anusar is a people’s book rooted in community voices, everyday innovations, and cultural pride. It shows us that the answers to better health are already present in our local diets, if only we choose to listen.”

Kamalkoli Majumdar, Co-curator of Swad Anusar and Campaigns Manager at Swasti, added: “Swad Anusar is about much more than cooking. It’s about the way food connects health, climate, and culture, and how the simplest dishes can carry resilience and dignity. To see this come to life during Rashtriya Poshan Maah feels deeply significant.”

The book goes beyond being a recipe collection. Structured across India’s regions, it combines storytelling, cultural context, nutritional insights, and climate-health connections. Each chapter opens with narratives that highlight how food traditions emerge from resilience, adaptation, and care. It also features a special chapter on the “unseen ingredient”, the social norms that shape nutrition in invisible yet powerful ways.

Swad Anusar is a call to reimagine nutrition in India. It invites policymakers, civil society, and communities to see recipes not just as food, but as evidence of indigenous knowledge and tools for climate-smart, inclusive nutrition.

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