Chess is an intense game that requires both physical and mental stamina. The loser not only faces physical defeat but also a blow to their pride. Both losses can be harsh—one physically and the other psychologically. Bobby Fischer, a former World Champion and one of the greatest chess players ever, loved seeing his opponent's confidence crumble.

Despite comprising only 2% of the body's mass, the human brain consumes 30% of our daily caloric intake. During intense chess tournaments, players can burn up to 6,000 calories. The high metabolic demand underscores the key role of nutrition in chess performance.

‍Breakfast for champions

A study by nutritional scientist Roberto H. Baglione, RD, found that 66.7% of Grandmasters eat at least three meals a day. However, 36.1% of them also skip breakfast often.

Baglione says skipping breakfast can hurt performance in mentally demanding tasks, including chess. Eating whole wheat bread, which has more fibre and complex carbs than white bread, keeps you full longer and maintains higher energy levels. It also helps prevent blood sugar spikes.

What you eat before a game matters too. If the food is hard to digest or you eat too much, more blood goes to your digestive organs and less to your brain, making you feel tired. To avoid this, Baglione recommends eating three hours before a game.

During matches, many players turn to quick energy sources like chocolate, dried fruits, and protein bars. Buttermilk is great for the middle of the game because it has lots of nutrients, helps with digestion, and keeps players hydrated and refreshed. Magnus Carlsen, the former world champion and highest-rated player ever, drank milk regularly during his intense 2018 game against Fabiano Caruana.

Some players supplement their diets with additional nutrients, particularly Vitamin B12, which aids in red blood cell production and may combat fatigue. Moreover, a majority of surveyed players incorporate regular physical activity into their training regimens. Baglione notes that aerobic exercise, with its endorphin-boosting effects, can contribute significantly to a player's overall well-being.

Chess as brain food

While the nutritional needs of chess players are becoming clearer, the cognitive benefits of chess itself remain a subject of debate. A large-scale study by the Education Endowment Foundation found no significant academic advantage for chess players in mathematics or English. However, teachers reported improvements in students' general life skills and behavior.

The findings align with research by Nuria Ciberia et al., which demonstrated enhanced quality of life and cognitive function—particularly in attention, processing speed, and executive function—among older adults who regularly played chess.

As the chess world continues to evolve, so too does our understanding of the close-knit relationship between nutrition, cognition, and performance. For players at all levels, a thoughtful approach to diet and exercise may just be the key to unlocking their full potential in this battle of minds.

Following Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Talim model of experiential learning, a small school in the outskirts of Guwahati, Assam addresses the struggle to educate its most vulnerable communities. Founded in 2016 by Parmita Sarma and Mazin Mukhtar, Akshar foundation provides free education to children from underprivileged families in exchange for plastic waste.  Many of these youngsters, under 14, used to work in local stone quarries for meagre wages. Now, instead of money, they pay fees with plastic waste, learning about pollution's impact while helping to keep the nearby Deepor Beel wetland clean.

The school, which started with 20 students, has now reached its maximum capacity of 110, with seven teachers covering kindergarten to Grade 12. “The children collect plastic waste generated in their house and bring it to the school. Sometimes, the kids also collect plastic waste from their neighbours' homes,” said Sarma, adding that children are not encouraged to go beyond their neighbourhood to collect plastic waste. 

The waste undergoes on-site recycling, transforming into eco-bricks, dog feeding bowls, flower planters, clipboards, and jewellery.  The upcycled products are used in the school as well as sold to visitors. "Through this process, they are learning to see value in plastic,” said Sarma, who holds a master’s degree in social work.

The model

The school is in Pamohi, near Deepor Beel, a vital wetland and Assam’s only Ramsar site. The region is under severe threat of pollution, impacting the public health of local communities and disrupting the ecology. “We realised the villagers were burning plastic waste to keep themselves warm. Even toddlers would sit around the fire, inhaling the toxic fumes. This was alarming, and we decided we needed to find a solution,” said Sarma. 

Sarma and Mukhtar urged parents to send plastic waste to the school, but their efforts were met with indifference, as the community perceived waste segregation as a time-consuming task. The founders also observed that FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) products that the poor can afford come in plastic packaging, leaving them little room towards making sustainable choices. “So we gave them two options—you either pay fees or deposit 25 plastic items every week. This led to full compliance from parents and the children,” said Mazin, an African-American who came to Assam in 2013 from New York to work in a school in Lakhimpur district where he met his wife, Parmita Sarma. Together, they decided to build the Akshar Foundation.

Ending child labour

The school offers vocational training courses, including teaching, carpentry, recycling, first-aid and animal care, office assistant, gardening, tailoring, and electrical work. The students invest one to two hours daily in these vocational training courses. “Once the students have completed their education, they can choose from various professions,” said Sarma.

Many children come from low-income families belonging to Karbi, Mishing, and Bodo tribes. These tribes are spread across the state, and some of them migrate to areas near Pamohi in search of employment. Parents often depend on their children as an additional source of income. “Many of these students were dropping out of school to work as labourers to support their families. So we decided to find a way to engage the children at the school and help them earn money,” said Sarma. 

We realised that we would have to design our school and its curriculum around the realities of the children

Senior students spend around an hour everyday teaching juniors. In return, they earn points. “In this way, the older students develop skills like communication, leadership, and professionalism. The younger students receive private tuition daily from the older students. This arrangement proves particularly beneficial as many of the younger students lack the educational support at home, given that their families are predominantly illiterate,” she said.  

The points function as currency in the school's bank, where students can save and also spend on snacks, sports equipment, clothes, toys, and shoes in the school's store and local shops. This system protects children's earnings from being appropriated by parents for household expenses.

Open school system

The Akshar School follows the National Institute of Open Schooling system instead of the more rigid curriculum of the Board of Secondary Education Assam (SEBA). 

“We realised that we would have to design our school and its curriculum around the realities of the children. Some children join our school years after they drop out. We assess their aptitude and place them in grade levels that align with their abilities. This targeted approach has helped students make the most of their education,” said Sarma.

The curriculum combines hands-on vocational skills with traditional academic subjects. Students learn carpentry, solar tech, and tailoring along with mathematics, physics, and economics.

So far, five students have graduated from Akshar and are currently employed as teachers in the school. Some female students, who would have otherwise been married off, are now working and contributing to their families, said the founders.

Changing lives

Sarma cited the example of eight-year-old Nitumoni (name changed), whose parents struggled with alcoholism while he was toiling in a stone quarry. “Despite these challenges, he displayed remarkable intelligence and excelled in mathematics. He could have ended up like his alcoholic parents but is now on a completely different trajectory. He now has savings in his bank account and is thriving in his academics while residing in the school hostel,” said Sarma.

The foundation has also helped girls who were at risk of child marriage and has provided them with education and vocational training, allowing them to earn money and stay in school.

Working with government schools

The Akshar Foundation started its first government school intervention in Delhi in 2018. Last year, the foundation signed an MoU with the government of Assam to start interventions in at least 100 government schools across the state. They hope to start this process by 2025-26. The progress will depend on the receptiveness of the schools, Sarma said. 

The foundation is also working with 30 government schools across Assam and will soon implement the model in Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Maharashtra. 

With each student's journey from labourer to eco-warrior, the school plays an important role in providing children with the childhood they deserve while providing relevant skills to break out of the poverty they were born into. With Sarma and Mukhtar’s work showing promises of scaling up, their mission goes a long way in building a brighter and more sustainable future—one student, one eco-brick at a time.

The second International Year of Rice in 2004, has had its impact on South India’s Wayanad too. The debates kicked off by it, gradually paved the way for forming an agri-producer company for traditional paddy seed conservation in Wayanad, a northern district of Kerala, that has metamorphosed farming in the region for the last seven years.
‍
The Food and Agriculture Organisation declared 2004 as the International Year of Rice, purportedly in response to a Swiss agri-chemical company's interest to patent rice genome. This prompted the launch of India's Save Our Rice (SOR) campaign.

The campaign, led by Thanal NGO in Kochi, Kerala, aimed to protect and conserve the ecosystems, the culture, diversity, and traditional wisdom related to rice. Considering that rice is the main food crop in Asia and feeds half the global population, this campaign was significant. In keeping with these objectives, Thirunelly Agri Producer Company (TAPCo) was gradually formed in Wayanad, Kerala.

Founded in 2018 by a group of farmers, experts, and advocates of sustainable farming the primary objective was to conserve traditional paddy seed varieties by providing a fair price to the farmers. TAPCo was formed with 14 registered farmers and has now grown to 120 in the last seven years.

Rice on the rise

Paddy was cultivated on about 1000 acres in Wayanad last season, and TAPCo supplied seeds to most of the farmers. “In the last seven years, we distributed at least 40 tonnes of seeds going by the calculation of 40 kilograms for one acre. We distributed 15 tonnes of seeds last year. Conserved seeds have been cultivated on 1000 acres in seven years. Also, the seeds are being distributed in consortiums organised by NGOs and in government programmes,” said Rajesh Krishnan, CEO of TAPCo. 

TAPCo conserves 54 rice varieties and serves as an information centre for farmers. So far, the company has conserved fifty-four varieties of rice, including Mallikuruva, Jugal, Kagga, Palthondi, Mannu Veliyan, and Kodukanni. They support 5,000 farmers with climate-resilient projects, offering weather advisories. Additionally, 120 registered farmers annually market 100 tonnes of paddy as rice.

GM goliaths

India allowed Mahyco Monsanto to legalise genetically modified cotton (Bt cotton) in 2002, sparking debates on GM crops. Advocates argued they are essential for feeding a growing, urbanising population amid climate change, while opponents claimed they prioritised multinational agrochemical and seed companies over addressing hunger.

“Questions were raised at that time on whether all the possibilities of existing models were tested, and debates and discussions were held with a focus on traditional seeds, how to conserve them, whether the conservation would be sustained through farmers only, and on genome diversity. Save our Rice campaign has already been active in Kerala,” said Krishnan.

According to Sridhar Radhakrishnan, an environmentalist and former project director of Thanal, there was a challenge on paddy seeds by international giants like Monsanto, and the Save our Rice campaign in Asia was started to fight that. “If we look back at the 1960s (the first international year of rice was in 1966), production and productivity had increased, but farmland became polluted and water depleted, in some states, paddy was cultivated in land unsuitable for it. Hence, in 2004, during the second Save our Rice campaign, a debate emerged on the need for genetically modified seeds, crop intense hybridisation, and genetic modification,” he said.

Hybridization is one of the ways of obtaining desirable characters into crop varieties and is done to produce hybrids that are genetically combined to give desired characters in one plant.

“Also a GM crop is a serious biosafety concern, a hazardous crop, and is rejected in many nations across the world. A major type of GM Crop is Herbicide Tolerant and would promote the use of herbicides that will again destroy the soil along with other crops and eventually increase weeds due to weed resistance. All this will completely destroy the agroecosystem in which the good health of the crop and hence the welfare of the farmers are dependent,” he added. 

On the contrary, traditional - local or native - seeds have developed resistance to pests and diseases, and are adapted to local agro-climatic conditions. 

In the case of traditional farmers, they have domesticated, improved, and conserved thousands of crop species and varieties, using their traditional knowledge. The diversity of traditional varieties is increasingly valuable for adaptation as climate changes, particularly as modern agriculture relies on a very limited number of crops and varieties. 

In addition, traditional varieties are better able to withstand environmental stress such as lack of water or nutrients. Traditional agriculture practices conserve key resources for resilience and adaptation- such as biodiversity, water, soil, and nutrients. “Save Our Rice campaign was built to promote indigenous varieties that can be cultivated without pesticide use,” said Radhakrishna. 

GM crop is a serious biosafety concern, a hazardous crop, and is rejected in many nations across the world.

TAPCo’s achievements

According to Krishnan, TAPCo is the largest Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) marketing traditional rice varieties in Kerala. He said, “On average, we cultivate, procure, and market 100 tonnes of paddy every year. We don’t believe in cultivating in a diversity block, we want farmers to cultivate in larger expansion, so that we can also market it and the market can sustain. For example, there is a traditional variety in Wayanad called Valiya Chennellu (bold red rice), which is rich in nutritional value. Its cultivation has been decreasing every year because it was not well-known in the market or among people. Its medicinal value lies in consuming it raw, making it difficult to find a market for it over the past three years. Since 2020, we have been making Aval (flattened rice) from it and marketing three tonnes of Aval per year. Now, more farmers are cultivating the Valiya Chennellu variety.”

The yield is not the same for all varieties. For example, Wayanadan Thondi, a high-yielding popular variety, has a yield of five tonnes per acre while the yield of other varieties, on average, ranges from two to 2.5 tonnes per acre.

TAPCo has expanded from introducing more seed varieties to farmers to conducting soil studies, helping farmers understand soil changes and adapt their farming methods accordingly. The soil is tested three times a year to monitor changes. TAPCo’s research and extension team regularly visits farmers' fields, providing alerts and warnings about pests and plant diseases. Additionally, TAPCo processes the paddy and works with a larger group of 5,000 farmers in Wayanad, who benefit from their research, extension services, and weather advisories.

Providing fair price

The minimum support price for paddy in the state is Rs 29.75 per kilogram. “However, we began procuring Valiya Chennellu last year at Rs 47 per kilogram, which provides an additional incentive for farmers to cultivate it. Market creation plays a crucial role in cultivation,” Krishnan said. Besides wholesale and retail marketing, TAPCo has been directly marketing to consumers in Bengaluru since 2022.

The FPO brings the major chunk of Wayanadan Thondi and Mullan Kaima, two aromatic rice varieties, into the market. Before the intervention of TAPCo, there was no market for the Mullan Kaima variety. TAPCo began selling puttu podi (rice cake powder) of Mullan Kaima last year and has sold more than a tonne till date.

The 126 farmers registered with TAPCo, from whom they procure paddy, receive additional support throughout the value chain, including research and extension services. These services bridge the gap between scientists, who work to solve agricultural problems through research, and farmers who need these solutions. Notably, the farmers do not use chemicals.

Since 2018, TAPCo has organised the Thirunelly Seed Festival in collaboration with other organisations, including Thanal. Thousands of farmers participate in this annual event. “We have done revival from an almost given-up phase, revived culture and created a source for seeds and popularised the idea. Now the State Seed Authority and Tribal Farming Department collect seeds from us,” Krishnan said. 

Support system

“In India, there were more than one lakh rice varieties in 1966, which has now come down to 30,000, that too, collected by universities and institutes, not with farmers,” said Usha S, an environmentalist, coordinator of Save Our Rice Campaign and founding member of Thanal.

After the Save Our Rice Campaign was launched, Thanal began to popularise organic farming. Thanal’s partner organisation in Tamil Nadu, Create, first popularised traditional seeds and the first seed festival was organised in Thiruvarur district in Tamil Nadu in 2007. 

“Seed festivals connect farmers. In Wayanad, since some of the varieties were still in use, we organised a harvest festival with tribal and non-tribal farmers and around 70 traditional farmers since 2006, eventually forming the Seed Savers Network in 2008,” she said.

In due course, Thanal facilitated TAPCo’s formation to be later disassociated from it. 

The transformation

“Paddy cultivation was on 7,800 hectares in Wayanad last year and traditional seeds were used on a minimum of 1,500 acres. Along with reviving the traditional seeds, TAPCo provided farmers with a fair price more than the market price or the minimum support price,” said Krishnan.

According to Johnson OV, chairman of TAPCo, farmers' transformation from fertiliser-using varieties to traditional ones was gradual. “Traditional seeds don’t need pesticides or fertilisers and their immunity is higher than the hybrid varieties,” he said.

Johnson spoke about the gradual shift from chemical pesticides to traditional varieties during the Green Revolution, citing initial yield challenges. However, he has observed a recent move towards quality-driven farming, with a rising demand for organic rice prompting farmers to adopt traditional varieties. “We focus not only on conservation but also on raising awareness about the qualities of each variety. People are now demanding specific varieties like Black rice, Navara, Thondi, Gandhakasala, and Valiya Chennellu based on their needs and health conditions.”

TAPCo also creates paddy art with different concepts every year to attract people to the idea of paddy cultivation and traditional varieties.