 Priyanka G Bansal and Aparna Mukherjee
What did you eat today?
It is one of the most ordinary questions we ask. We ask it at the dinner table, over a phone call, or simply to keep a conversation going. Yet those four words carry a question that matters to every one of us: are we giving our bodies what they need to grow, function and stay healthy?
Nutrition shapes how a child grows, how an adolescent develops, how a woman experiences pregnancy, how an adult stays healthy and how an older person stays active. In that sense, nutrition is not just about food. It runs through the story of our health at every stage of life.
That is why Poshan Maah, observed every September, is more than a yearly reminder to “eat healthy”. It is a moment to pause and ask a bigger question: as India’s food habits and health needs change, are our nutrition choices keeping up?
India’s nutrition story is changing, and it is growing more complex. Undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies remain serious concerns, even as overweight, obesity and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are on the rise. In effect, we are dealing with too little, too much and, at times, simply the wrong mix, all at once.
A picture like this calls for an equally broad response. Government programmes and public health initiatives are increasingly addressing the many sides of health. Their work ranges from screening and early detection of NCDs such as obesity and hypertension to promoting healthier food choices, cutting down on excess oil and encouraging physical activity. Initiatives such as the Eat Right India Movement and Khelo India carry a simple but powerful message: prevention is not just about avoiding disease; it is about building healthier lives.
From evidence to action
At the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), nutrition has long been a core area of work. Through its network of institutes and research grants, ICMR works across the full journey: understanding nutrition problems and what drives them, generating and bringing together evidence, testing interventions in real-world settings, and translating findings into policies and programmes. This work covers long-standing challenges such as anaemia and childhood undernutrition, as well as newer frontiers such as the gut microbiome, nutrigenomics, metabolomics, and emerging technologies for assessing nutrition and personalising approaches to health.
The emphasis is increasingly on turning evidence into solutions. This means developing and evaluating food- and behaviour-based approaches that are scientifically sound, affordable, acceptable and practical in everyday life. Research is also looking beyond the health sector, at how agriculture, food systems and dietary choices can work together to improve nutrition and help prevent NCDs.
The rainbow on the plate
At the heart of all this is a simple idea: diet diversity matters. A healthy plate need not be complicated. Think of it as a rainbow—different colours, different foods and, importantly, different nutrients. Vegetables and fruits, green leafy vegetables, whole grains and millets, pulses, nuts and seeds, milk or other protein sources all have a place. The goal is not to create a perfect plate at every meal, but to build a diverse diet across the day.
The rainbow plate is more than a colourful picture. It carries a practical lesson: no single food can provide everything our body needs. India already has an extraordinary variety of grains, pulses, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and traditional foods across regions. We do not always need to search for the next “superfood”; sometimes, we simply need to rediscover the diversity already present in our own food traditions.
At the same time, nutrition is rarely about putting foods into neat boxes of “good” and “bad”. Portion, frequency, preparation, nutrient composition and the overall dietary pattern all matter. A traditional food is not automatically healthy simply because it is traditional, just as a packaged food is not automatically unhealthy merely because it is packaged. The bigger picture is what matters: the diet as a whole.
The nutrition transition is visible
There is another change that is increasingly hard to ignore. The rise in overweight and obesity illustrates why India’s nutrition agenda has to address both deficiency and excess. Data from successive rounds of the National Family Health Survey show a steady increase in the combined prevalence of overweight and obesity among both women and men.
Note: Overweight/obesity is defined as BMI ≥25 kg/m². Figures are for adults aged 15–49 years.
Source: National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3, 2005–06; NFHS-4, 2015–16; NFHS-5, 2019–21; NFHS-6, 2023–24).
The next phase of nutrition research will need to be more integrated—and more closely connected to real life. We need a better understanding of changing dietary patterns, vulnerable groups and the drivers of unhealthy diets.
We need to know what works, for whom, where and at what scale. Stronger links between agriculture, food systems, nutrition and health, better use of technology and data, and greater attention to preventing diet-related NCDs will be central to this next phase.
Most importantly, we need to move beyond simply describing nutrition problems. The real opportunity is to anticipate them, prevent them and develop solutions that people can actually use in everyday life.
Because ultimately, nutrition is not about following a perfect diet. It is about the thousands of ordinary choices we make, meal after meal.
What is on our plate today is also a little bit of the health we are building for tomorrow.
Perhaps that is the simplest way to understand Poshan—not just adding years to life, but adding health to those years.
(The authors are Scientist E, ICMR Hqrs., New Delhi and Scientist F, Head, Division of RCN and Clinical Trials Unit, ICMR Hqrs., New Delhi, respectively) |
