Aquatic ‘superfoods’ could combat hunger triggered by the pandemic, says World Food Prize winner
Dr Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted is the first woman of Asian descent to win a $250,000 award dubbed the Nobel prize of food
11 May 2021 • 2:01pm
Dr Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, the first woman of Asian descent to win an award dubbed the Nobel prize of food.
Credit: Finn Thilsted
Aquatic “superfoods” should be a central plank of policies to combat rising levels of hunger triggered by the pandemic, according to the first woman of Asian descent to win an award dubbed the Nobel prize of food.
Dr Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago in a family of Indian descent, has been a central figure in decades of research which has reshaped scientific understanding of the nutritional value of small fish commonly eaten across Southeast Asia.
Thilsted began research in Bangladesh in the 1980s while working to improve the lives of malnourished people. After talking to local women who told her that eating a variety of local small fish species made them stronger, she began researching their diet. Returning to Copenhagen, she studied the nutritional value of small fish species in Bangladesh and later Cambodia.
“I was able to assess the nutritional composition of these small fish species and realized that they were extremely rich in multiple micronutrients, vitamins and minerals, and most importantly that the forms in which they were found were highly available and could be absorbed by the human body,” she told The Associated Press via video from Penang, Malaysia, ahead of the ceremony.