2021 world food prize laureate
Photo: Afrina Choudhury/WorldFish
Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted is the 2021 World Food Prize Laureate for her influential work on nutrition, fish, and aquatic food systems. Often referred to as the "Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture," the World Food Prize is the most prominent global award recognizing exceptional individuals who have worked to enhance human development by improving the quality, quantity, and availability of food for all.
Dr. Thilsted is the first woman of Asian heritage to be awarded the World Food Prize. She was the first to examine the nutritional composition of small native fish species commonly found and consumed in Bangladesh and Cambodia. Her research demonstrated that the high levels of multiple essential micronutrients and fatty acids in these affordable and locally available foods offered life-changing benefits for children's cognitive development in their first 1000 days of life and the nutrition and health of their mothers. From this breakthrough, she went on to develop nutrition-sensitive approaches and innovations to food production, distribution, and consumption that have improved the diets, nutrition, and livelihoods of millions of vulnerable women, men, and children living in low- and middle-income countries across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
Her trailblazing work on nutrition in low- and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa show that fish and aquatic food systems are an integral part of food production, local diets, culture, child and maternal health, and general wellbeing. Her scientific findings demonstrate fish, and aquatic foods must occupy a more central role in future nutrition-focused interventions and policy and investment decisions for agricultural research and development and a sustainable transformation of food systems towards healthy and resilient diets.
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