Shakuntala Thilsted, dried fish, and the World Food Prize 2021

Members of the Dried Fish Matters project would like to offer their sincere congratulations to Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted on her receipt of the 2021 World Food Prize.

The World Food Prize is awarded for “a specific, exceptionally significant, individual achievement that advances human development with a demonstrable increase in the quantity, quality, availability of, or access to food through creative interventions at any point within the full scope of the food system.”

Shakuntala’s award recognized how her research and innovation have contributed to advancing “holistic, nutrition-sensitive approaches to aquaculture and food systems.”

We are proud to have Shakuntala as part of the Dried Fish Matters project.

In Shakuntala’s own words, dried fish have a central place in her work:

A significant part of my research that led to me being awarded the 2021 World Food Prize is on dried fish and the use of dried small fish and fish-based products such as fish powder and fish chutney to improve food and nutrition security in Asia and Africa, with focus on women and children in the first 1000 days of life.

We know that dried fish, as a concentrated source of multiple micronutrients and essential fatty acids, is a super food and can combat malnutrition in many communities.

The Dried Fish Matters project indeed owes much of its inspiration to Shakuntala’s path-breaking work with our other project colleagues Dr. Ben Belton and Dr. Mostafa Hossain.

This earlier research, focusing on dried fish value chains in Bangladesh, urged us to acknowledge that “dried fish may contribute significantly toward food and nutrition security – achievement of which is fundamental to material wellbeing – in a country that continues to experience severe levels of malnutrition and associated health problems” (Belton et al. 2018).

At the same time, however, Shakuntala and her colleagues’ work confirmed the near absence of information about dried fish in research and policy literature.

Building on Shakuntala’s pioneering food and nutrition security research, the Dried Fish Matters project was established to address these knowledge gaps through a research partnership that now includes twelve teams from six countries across South and South-East Asia.

I look forward to seeing the work being done in Dried Fish Matters grow in strength and be scaled for nourishing many more people, globally.

Shakuntala H. Thilsted

Thank you and congratulations!

For more on Shakuntala and the World Food Prize, see the WorldFish video clip, “Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted reacts to receiving the World Food Prize“.

Further reading

Details on Shakuntala’s life and achievements and reaction to the prize:

• World Food Prize Foundation. “World Food Prize Foundation Laureates: Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted“
• WorldFish. “Nutrition scientist Dr. Shakuntala Thilsted awarded the 2021 World Food Prize“

Shakuntala’s collaborations on dried fish value chains, with DFM collaborators Ben Belton and Mostafa Hossain:

• Belton, Ben, Mostafa A. R. Hossain, and Shakuntala H. Thilsted. 2018. “Labour, Identity and Wellbeing in Bangladesh’s Dried Fish Value Chains.” In Social Wellbeing and the Values of Small-Scale Fisheries, 217–41. MARE Publication Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60750-4_10.
• Belton, Ben, Mostafa Hossain, Mofizur Rahman, and Shakuntala Thilsted. 2014. “Dried Fish Production, Consumption and Trade in Bangladesh.” February 26. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27787.90402.
• Hossain, Mostafa A. R., Benjamin Belton, and Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted. 2013. “Preliminary Rapid Appraisal of Dried Fish Value Chains in Bangladesh.” WorldFish. Bangladesh.