Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) recently released its latest publication First Food: Culture of Taste in New Delhi at the first ‘Tasting India Symposium: Eat in India | Make in India’. The book was jointly released by Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog and Manjit Gill, corporate chef, ITC Hotels and president, Indian Federation of Culinary Associations in the presence of CSE director general Sunita Narain

Speaking about the book, Narain said, ‘We are in imminent danger of losing nature as well as the knowledge that links it to our food and nutrition. This book is about the rediscovery of the knowledge—the knowledge of nature that is the essence of food that delights our palates and nourishes our bodies. This is the critical food-nutrition-natureculture connection.’

She added that the Tasting India Symposium was an ideal platform to talk about a publication like this, as the symposium seeks to introduce opinion-makers in the country and around the world to India’s gastronomical heritage.

The book, which is second in the series, the first being First Food: A Taste of India’s Biodiversity, is an attempt at reviving India’s traditional culture of eating home-cooked food with seasonal ingredients, and is important in the current milieu of industrial and junk food that has led to a proliferation of foods with high fat, salt or sugar which are increasingly becoming an intrinsic part of our consumption patterns.

BLD