Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma
Food & Sustainable Living Expert
Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma is a Canadian sustainability writer, public speaker, and TV Guest expert living in Toronto. Food is her love language, and she teaches people that cooking good food and climate action are interconnected, and how low-waste, sustainable living practices can (and must!) be a part of everyday living.
Puneeta’s debut cookbook, Good Food, Healthy Planet, was A Globe and Mail and National Post Top Cookbook of 2024. She is also the founder of Maple and Marigold, a popular food and culture blog she started in 2016 to help people rediscover their roots through their kitchen. Puneeta’s clients and collaborations include organisations such as Women’s Excellence Alliance, Carbonhound, BMO and Cadillac Fairview, and speaking at events like Toronto Climate Week.
Puneeta in Press and Media
For nearly a decade, Puneeta has been writing, teaching, and speaking about what’s good for us and for the planet. As a cookbook author and trusted voice on sustainable food and climate-forward living, Puneeta has been covered by national and international media, including The Globe and Mail, National Post, CTV’s The Social, Breakfast Television, CP24, CHCH Morning Live, CBC, CBC Life, The Vancouver Sun and Calgary Herald.
Born and brought up in India, Puneeta’s nomadic life as a child, with her world travel experience, taught her the value of putting down deep roots and helping others do the same. Today, Puneeta lives in Toronto with her husband, two children, and their cat, Seven.
Puneeta's Ecosystem
Puneeta's debut cookbook, Good Food, Healthy Planet, was named a Globe and Mail and National Post Top Cookbook of 2024. It expands on the notion of 'good food' to include people and planet, and eases the burden of decision-making in our day-to-day lives. Buy your copy of Good Food, Healthy Planet.
Personal Note from Puneeta
Hello, hello! Puneeta here!
If you’re here, you likely already know I am a writer and speaker, and I grow food, and most days, almost every day, I cook too. In my work, I teach people nature-based solutions and sustainable living practices that can be seamlessly adopted into our everyday lives. Seamlessly - because I believe sustainable cooking, eating and choosing can (and must) be easy, practical and totally doable for everyone! I help people connect the dots between food and climate and put the joy into practical, low-waste, everyday living.
Food is my love language, and sustainable, enjoyable, equitable living - that’s my jam! I am so glad that you’re here.
I am also the author of The Globe and Mail and National Post Top Cookbook of 2024, Good Food, Healthy Planet, a category-expanding cookbook that expanded on the notion of good food for real people. I speak at events and workshops, write in various places, and you may even see me on TV or your favourite radio show. I also produce videos for social media - short and quick clips, along with longer explainer-style broadcasts to help break down complicated concepts. Science can be complicated, but I promise you, our food needn’t be.
Simplifying Good Food
When I first started writing Good Food, Healthy Planet (affectionately called GFHP) back in 2020, I was trying to answer three questions:
- Can we eat to feed our body?
- Can we eat to feed our mind?
- Finally, can we eat to save the planet?
At that time, I was feeling called to redefine this notion of “good food” and to explore how taste and nutrition were only one small part of the story with food. It had become clear to me that looking at food through a purely “me” lens was simply not enough anymore. So I went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole - from UN IPCC reports to Food/ Mood research papers - I even completed a certificate from Deakin University to further my understanding of the connection between what we eat and how we feel. Spoiler alert - there's a gut-brain axis that connects our brain to the belly - and it's a two-way street!
This was the summer of 2020 - and frankly, I needed goals to get through those long lockdowns.
Nomadic yet Rooted
I grew up in India. My dad was in the Indian Military, and we moved cities, states, and schools every 18 months or so. New home, friends, routines and community, sometimes a new language and culture too. My brother and I became really good at adapting in this nomadic lifestyle, and uprooting, transplanting and repotting again and again. When I started my blog, Maple and Marigold, in 2016, at that time, I was actually taking a hiatus from my corporate career and life. I started using the time to share about what was important to me at that time - food, culture, and our cross-cultural lives. A little bit of maple and marigold. Then the 2018 UN IPCC report came out, and together with my father’s passing, it was as if a lightning bolt went through me. I felt a new sense of urgency. Slowly, the connections were becoming clear.
Cooking, Climate and Connection
For a while now, climate science and medical research have been telling us that tasty, nutritious food that's good for our bodies and brains is the same food we need to sustain our environment. Generations of grandmas had been saying this already all along. That's how I began to expand my notion of “good food” to include not just big flavour and nutrition, but traditional wisdom and climate-forward choices as well - choices that respect our dwindling resources, reduce waste, and improve our future quality of life. It was also becoming clear that our seemingly small individual actions could have enormous collective impact. What we did in our own homes and communities, small steps even, had the potential to improve the lives of people and protect the environment, too.
Good for Us
Climate change isn’t just coming; it’s here already. We are losing forests at an unprecedented rate; wildfire season starts earlier, and it lasts longer every year. With unpredictable weather and tight resources, growing food is harder than it used to be. At a time when it's important to be agile and resilient, we are finding it hard to be either.
Good for the Planet too
For the past nine years, I’ve been writing, teaching, and speaking about what’s good for us - and for the planet. Along the way, I’ve worn many hats: video creator and writer, TV and radio guest expert, workshop leader, cook, gardener, occasional Instagrammer, and now sustainability author too.
At the heart of my work is a belief that also guides my book - we have everything we need to create enormous positive change, and our collective power is the most incredible energy source there is.
Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat and leader who led the climate negotiations that resulted in the United Nations Paris Agreement, calls this time “an everyone-everywhere mission, in which we all must individually and collectively assume responsibility.”
Everyone, everywhere, people with planet, hand in hand, together.
I’m deeply grateful for the wisdom that has been passed down to me. I am also grateful for the opportunity to continue to learn, to integrate what I’m discovering, and finally, to pass it on to others.
With optimism,
