Healthy Eating Plan – Eating Seaweed

Seaweed may seem like an odd thing to be eating but it can make a valuable addition to your diet.

Seaweed is very high in fibre while being low in cholesterol and calories. It offers an abundance of vitamins and minerals, nutrients and trace elements in very high proportions compared with the contents of earth-grown produce.

Iodine is an important mineral contained in seaweed which is responsible for a healthy thyroid, which helps us to metabolise food inan efficient way, thus turning calories into energy and not storing them as fat.

Recent studies have now discovered the presence of alginate in seaweed. This has the ability to flush fat from the body by amounts of more than 75%. This means that your body will only retain 25% of the fat you consume, if you take seaweed with the food or eat food with seaweed content.

This is very exciting news for the weight loss industry and anyone with weight loss problems.

Seaweed is available from most Asian stores and some good supermarkets and it can be simply included into foods that you may already be preparing. It is a simple matter to add dried seaweed to stews and casseroles. They can be eaten as vegetables and with salads and even dried and sprinkled on food in the place of table salt.

Seaweed has been a regular part of Chinese and Japanese cuisine for millennia. The health benefits have long been realised in the East and it is believed that seaweed is in part responsible for the low incidence of obesity and cancer in that region. It is believed that the risk of breast and ovarian cancer in particular can be lowered with regular consumption of seaweed.

There are three well known seaweeds: Nori, Dulse and Wakame.

• Nori normally comes in sheets which are dried and has become popular because of the increase in sushi consumption.
• Wakame is often used in soups, and particularly the traditional miso soup.
• Dulse can be found in Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as Iceland and Canada, but normally it is to the east that we look for seaweed cultivation.

Known as aquaculture the farming of seaweed is prevalent in China, Korea and Japan which make: 60%, 11% and 10% of the world’s supply of seaweed, respectively.

High in omega-3 and omega-6, antioxidants, polyphenols and flavenoids, vitamins, minerals and amino acids they are a great health food. They also contain Fucoidan and Laminarin which have anti-biotic and anti-viral qualities.

• Kelp is a sea vegetable that will give you iodine, chromium, and carotene. Use as a vegetable or salad addition. Great for weight loss and healthy looking skin and hair.
• Nori The think dark sheets that surround sushi has made this one of the most popular seaweeds in the west. Turns from black to green when toasted.
• Wakame is green and stringy in appearance. It is used in miso soup and salad. It is a great source of vitamins and minerals.
• Kombu is a kelp and good for healthy thyroid, lowering blood pressure and cholesterol.
• Hijike is mild flavoured and rich in calcium and iron. It will swell dramatically to 3 or 4 times its size when added to eater.
• Dulse is very salty and can be used as a salt substitute.

There are many ways of including seaweed into meals and thus making them healthy, tasty and highly nutritious. You will be surprised at how tasty seaweed actually is, it does not taste of the ocean!

As the health and weight loss benefits of seaweed are becoming realised by people in the west we will likely be seeing more and more people including seaweed in their healthy eating plan.