Nivi Jaswal is the Founder and President of Virsa Foundation where she brings together professionals that blend diverse specialties in areas such as Anthropology, Psychology, Animal Rights, Social Work, Lifestyle Medicine, Health Coaching, Filmmaking, Creative Problem Solving et al to design and deliver Climate Conscious Plant Powered Community projects, with a focus on addressing Chronic Illness, encouraging Emotional Wellbeing, Immune Resiliency and ultimately, fostering enhanced Creative & Artistic Expression – amongst Women of Color in Underserved Communities. 

 I spoke to her recently on her journey to the world of wellness and nutrition with a focus on plant based diets

Please share your interesting journey from a corporate career to founding a nonprofit? 

After healing myself on a whole food plant-based approach and gaining deeper insight into how the nexus between animal agriculture and processed food runs (or, ruins) our foodways, I couldn’t unsee what I had seen!

It concerned me deeply that even though I had spent the better part of my corporate career managing health, wellness, and life sciences brands, it took a clinical diagnosis for me to – quite frankly – stumble upon nutrition science and lifestyle medicine that truly works. 

While I had learned valuable skills in brand management, consumer marketing, behavior change intervention design and research, the importance of brand mission – I realized that ultimately it was purpose in the service of profit, and not vice versa. I wondered if there was a world in which both purpose and profit could meaningfully co-exist, with real endeavors designed for public and planetary health delivered with full authenticity and integrity.

This curiosity sowed the seeds of a passion project with rural Indian artisans, which rapidly blossomed into a research-oriented consumer-advocacy nonprofit, evolving in parallel with my own understanding of my own personal and professional calling. I no longer identified with the corporations and brands that held allure for who I used to be. Quitting the corporate world was both exciting and terrifying.

And, with this started the journey of really getting to know my Self better and crafting my own holistic identity, aligned with my values, and calling.

You adopted a plant-based lifestyle? Tell us more on this transformation and what challenges you faced if any?

I follow a 100% whole food plant-based approach to personal nutrition, including and especially, oil-free when cooking at home for my family.

The transformation was nearly three years in the making since I first received my various diagnoses in 2015. The idea that animal protein was superior was deeply embedded in my mind. I stubbornly held onto these beliefs even when a well-intentioned nutritionist educated me otherwise. I was the posterchild for the “precontemplation” stage of the famous transtheoretical model of behavior change¹

My biggest challenge was unlearning all the lies that industry-sponsored nutrition science has taught us in academia, advertising and even through, medical establishments… considering most hospitals, schools and companies actively endorse fast food in their cafeterias!

Once having absorbed this truth, my next biggest challenge was dealing with my own participation in the processed food and beverage industry, and the disillusionment and loss of pride that accompanied once I learned I had merely been a loyal solider in a long line stretching into generations who had been coopted into the corporate social mission.

The wisest words at this juncture came from my personal trainer at Precision Nutrition: “Our goals change when our values transform”. I realized that day in April 2018 that I had to go all in, take the plunge, alter my health goals, and see how deep the plant-based rabbit hole goes! Six months later, I had healed from all the diagnoses and what’s more, dropped a few dress sizes!

Cooking and eating a whole food plant-based diet was never really a challenge. It was, in fact, a creative culinary adventure and thankfully, as part of my inheritance, I had a wide variety of Indian regional cuisines to explore and support my transition. All I needed to do was find non-dairy alternatives and learn doing tadka (tempering of spices) without oil. India-based whole food plant-based organizations such as SHARAN India (founded by Dr. Nandita Shah) and Satvic Movement (founded by Surabhi Jain-Saraf) were of huge support.

My hesitation in 2015 and for the next three long and painful years until 2018 was primarily fueled by the plethora of pseudo-science and “fake news” on nutrition that’s unfortunately peddled even by the most prestigious journals and magazines. Once I overcame that mental hurdle, I was finally able to embrace my roots and bring my health and resilience back “home” into my body.

please consider it very much a matter of survival of our species. 

You started the Virsa Foundation? Can you share its mission and activities?

I founded The Virsa Foundation Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit in the Boston area, in Fall of 2018 with a focus on whole food plant-based culinary demonstration programs and intervention for underserved communities, especially rural women artisans, in Punjab, India.

During the pandemic, with volunteer work increasingly challenging in rural India, I took the opportunity to pivot the emphasis of our work towards research and consumer advocacy, and so, the JIVINITI program was born.

In 2020, we initiated our first qualitative research project “SHAKTI” with low income, nutritionally underserved women of color in the US., While processed foods tend to focus on those who can pay, I fervently believe that businesses with compassion embedded in their mission cannot afford to ignore those who are often “zip-coded” out of emergent health and wellness options. This project is in data analysis phase right now with a highly qualified ethnographer and sociologist on board.

In the same year, I also launched. the JIVINITI Coalition – a collective of thirty-three women-led organizations – and together we ran a campaign from November 2020 – February 2021 petitioning the Biden-Harris administration to include plant-based nutrition guidance in their climate policy, and appealing to Vice President Harris to go vegan for thirty days.

Summer of 2021 saw the launch of Project GAIA – an all-USA public health study that’s investigating the COVID-19 experience of Americans through the lens of their dietary preferences. With public health and statistical methodology experts from two leading universities in North America supporting this initiative, this study is in data analysis phase. Over 50+ nonprofit organizations came together in the Fall of 2021 to help collect data for this study.

Additionally, I host a monthly podcast on SPOTIFY and YouTube show, where I connect the dots between various aspects of intersectionality, veganism and plant-based eating, and health, climate, and animal rights.

I am also working to deliver authoritative position papers on key topics such as colonialism, cuisine, and dairy, expanding upon a presentation previously made on this topic – and other work, for instance, connecting the dots between a whole food plant-based approach, gut-brain axis, and spiritual health. 

You have started a research project? What kind of support are you seeking?

Both Project SHAKTI and GAIA have so far been sustained primarily by my personal savings and limited grant funding. As a small nonprofit, careful research design, partnering with reputed research firms, the process of data collection via collaboration with like-minded nonprofits was a truly challenging first step – however, the next phase of data analysis needs even greater focus, skill set and talent. This can only be accomplished through incremental funding for honoraria to advisors and manuscript development research scholars, applying for publication, peer review and socializing the findings through social media, research-based articles in industry-independent magazines and blogs, and through speaking engagements.

I hope that generous and kindhearted donors and grant-making organizations will come forward to support the JIVINITI program. It’s perfectly natural for philanthropic individuals to want to reach out for a conversation, and if so – I will be happy to share in greater depth and detail.

Finally, share with us some tips on how we can adopt a healthy lifestyle.

Reflect upon your roots. Embracing them is like coming back home to our higher Self: In Sanskrit, there is a saying “Atithi Devo Bhava” (a guest is in the likeness of a deity). Our atman (soul) too is a guest in our physical body, and this body is a temple and the food we serve it is prasad (divine offering). The plant-supportive nutritionist, who I stubbornly argued with back in 2015, asked me a provocative question: “What if Buddha came to dinner? What will you serve?”. I found myself reading a book of the same title three years later when I was finally ready to change my dairy and meat imbibing ketogenic inspired eating behavior. 

 Try it out as a family! Our families are a source and pillar of our strength. If even one person in your family and social circle agrees to come along for the ride with you – take them up on it. Learning, unlearning and long-term behavior change is made more fun, playful, creative and sustainable when we share the journey of our lives with others. 

 Finally, I co-founded an online community called “LiveMAST Whole Food Plant-Based Support Group”, with the express intention of supporting persons of South Asian origin in their transition to a plant-based lifestyle. Now followed by more than 2000 persons, majority South Asian origin, from over 53 countries – LiveMAST has become quite the repository for regional recipes, transition-related conversations and vibrant content contributed by our very creative and enterprising members. Adopting a healthy lifestyle isn’t difficult when you have an entire tribe cheering you along!  

To be continued ....in our next issue

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