Many people around the world in less-industrialized coastal regions depend heavily on seaweed as a dietary staple. Since it’s fixed in position, it’s easier to collect compared to fishing, as long as you can find an area with shallow enough water that you can reach the seaweed on the bottom. Seaweed is particularly popular in Asia, where it’s held in high regard in many places for its health properties. Many westerners have also eaten seaweed, most notably when consuming sushi.
And in fact, scientific studies indicate that eating seaweed has several health benefits. Seaweed is a major food source in Okinawa, one of the places in the world where people often live to be more than 100 years old. The high nutrient count in seaweed, particularly in the form of minerals, combined with its relatively low calorie count make it a good food source for westerners, too. The high mineral count is partially due to the fact that the oceans haven’t been cultivated the way ground soil has, and thus hasn’t been depleted of nutrients by aggressive farming.
Seaweed’s health benefits, such as improved digestion and heart health, have been quite thoroughly documented. Due to its use in traditional medicine in many places in the world, it is also thought to be a detoxifying agent, although the research on this is much more dubious.
Seaweed, which is technically an alga, comes in three types — green, red and brown. Most of the types in the three groups are edible, but the most commonly consumed are the various types of kelp, which are green. Nori, often used in Japanese food, is also a great source of omega-3 fatty acids. The inedible types are typically classified as such due to flavor or texture considerations, not because they’re poisonous or in other ways harmful, making seaweed easy to harvest even for amateurs. In fact, in many places in the world, there are tours for scuba divers and snorkelers that focus on finding and collecting seaweed for consumption after the dive.
However, as with any food source, we must exercise a bit of moderation with seaweed. Because it’s so rich in nutrients, consuming large amounts can be problematic. Vitamin K, found in many types of kelp, has many health benefits, but consuming very large amounts of it can cause problems for people who take blood thinners. The same holds true for potassium, a mineral we mostly get from bananas, but which can be found in abundance in nori seaweed. When consumed in too great a quantity, potassium can be problematic for people with kidney problems.
And, as with any natural resource, the seaweed harvest must be approached with respect for sustainability. While seaweed is touted as an almost-perfect food source and an abundant one, it only seems abundant — limitless even — because we haven’t started exploiting it in a large-scale manner yet. The current state of our oceans proves that human activity can have profound, devastating, effects on marine life. Seaweed plays an important part in the ocean’s ecosystems, as these are the green plants that form the bottom of the food chain, much like plants on dry land. Stands of seaweed are also the oceans’ forests, where many animals make their homes and find shelter from predators. While adding seaweed to our diets can have great health benefits, we must still approach the practice of seaweed for general consumption with sustainability in mind.
