The humble seaweed may well be known for its power to encase bite of viscid rice and raw fish ( not to mentionspa - goers ) but this plant - like organism has slowly form its way of life into an impressive multifariousness of human industries over the past 15 C . Now one can discover seaweed , or at least one of its many prized extracts , in everything from toothpaste to wound fertilisation .
What is seaweed
The term “ seaweed ” is a misnomer as the stuff and nonsense we call seaweed is not a weed — in fact , it ’s not even a industrial plant . Seaweed is really one of three ( now and then four ) broad groups of multicellular , marine algae . These ancient mintage are unremarkably sorted according to a 19th century taxonomy based on their color : ruby , green , brown , and blue - green .
Even though blue - common alga is actually colonies of cyanobacteria , given their tufted plant - like appearance , they are sometimes collocate in with the other three . likewise , crimson and brown seaweeds are almost exclusively oceanic while green seaweeds are seldom found outside of fresh water . This wide kitchen stove of habitats and stem from seaweed ’s ancient blood line — it ’s among the oldest form marine life and actually represents 4 of the 6 kingdoms of organisms .
While its difficult to accurately delimit what is and is n’t a “ seaweed , ” it ’s not laborious to see the product ’s economic value to human society . ware engage seaweed and its infusion tot about $ 6 billion each year , $ 5 billion of which come from direct uptake of the algae as a grocery . The remaining billion bucks stem from the descent of hydrocolloids from the plant issue for a variety of US ( which we ’ll get to in a irregular ) .
Current ball-shaped estimate put seaweed harvests at around 8 million metric tons annually , a vast majority of which is now naturalise rather than harvested from the wild . China is far and away the largest producer of polite seaweed , raking in around 5 million wet metrical tons of the material every year from hundreds of hectare of coastal nursery .
The remain 3 million tons or so comes from 34 other nations worldwide . And since seaweed have adapted to grow in virtually any piquant — or at least brackish — water , they can be commercially cultured virtually anywhere in the world from wintry subarctic waters to aquamarine Caribbean coasts . Roughly 90 percent of the total annual harvest now come from tame sources — largely because demand over the last half one C has immensely outpace course take place provision .
Don’t call it a comeback, seaweed’s been here for years
Seaweed has been a staple harvest in east Asia for more than 2500 years . The earliest recorded references of seaweed exploitation date back to 6th century BC whenSze Teuwrote , “ Some algae are a delicacy primed for the most honoured guests , even for the King himself . ” By the eighth Century AD , a half twelve varieties of seaweed had made their means to Japan and , today , the island body politic cultivates 21 disjoined species . The three most common of which are Nori ( used to wrap sushi ) , Kombu ( a ubiquitous soup line of descent component ) , and Wakame ( used for the most part in soups and salad ) .
Until recently , seaweed in reality constituted as much as 10 percentage of the Nipponese dieting . Today , China , Japan , and South Korea still consume the lion ’s share of seaweed , though the apace growing popularity of sushi has understand a spike in need from the U.S. , Europe , and South America .
The nutritionary time value of seaweed can not be understated . It ’s passing plentiful in tincture of iodine , Ca , vitamin C ( 1.5 times as much as an orange ) , B12 , even protein . It ’s in high spirits in fibre and low in fat . Seaweed was also a vital portion to traditional Chinese Crab treatments and other medical treatments . The Romans were also self-aggrandizing fans of the algae , using it to care for wounds , George Burns , and rashes .
As were the Celts . It was n’t just East Asia that developed a taste for seaweed ; it ’s been a cornerstone of traditional Irish and Scotch cookery for near 4,000 years . Known as Dulse , a.k.a Irish moss , this violent seaweed was most often eaten by monks and the indigent , which is why it has developed a strong stigma in both culture as a food only fit for the most down and out — not unlike lobster .
Its ignominy as a foodstuff cement in the last three C thanks to a series of governmental PR blunders — like the time it was splendidly fed to Scotland ’s poor when they were forcibly relocated from the highlands to coastal country to make style for commercial sheep farming interests in the early 18th century and by starving Irish citizen during the nineteenth century potato shortage . A second species , purple lavar ( or “ slake ” ) is a central ingredient in Welsh lavabread and is greatly preferred to the third most unwashed species , the green algae well cognize as ocean lettuce .
pass on seaweed ’s ability to glean and boil down a variety of valuable nutrient and minerals , they have often been used as traditional fertilizers the globe over . In Scotland and Ireland , for exemplar , nitrogen- and potassium - rich seaweed that washed up on shore would be collect , briefly composted , then dug into garden as a fertiliser and land conditioner to forestall the part ’s slender , nutrient - poor filth .
Seaweed goes industrial
During the latter half of the 17th Century , seaweed made an important passage from ware to precursor when European — belike first in France and then pass around across the channel to the British Isles — discovered that cauterise seaweed produce an extremely alkaline ash consist of soda pop and potash , two chemicals widely used in the day ’s glassware and glazing industries .
soda ash ash — or as we know it sodium carbonate — is more often than not only gain from plant life live in in high spirits - sodium soils like the Middle East while potash ( potassium carbonate ) is largely gathered from hardwoods . These chemicals are harvested by first collecting , drying , and burning plant matter . The ash is then dumped into a prominent overt - top iron pot and soaked in hot water . The resulting alkali solution is then churn and leave to vaporise . The resulting lily-white reside ( hence “ deal ash ” ) was then collected and used in everything from glass - making to soap . I can be extracted from seaweed in much the same style except that , after boil , the alkaline solution is fix through the addition of hydrogen peroxide which extract the iodide ions rather than provide the chemical to precipitate out like caustic potash .
The bountifulness of seaweed along the British , Irish , and Scottish coast helped buoy the UK during its isolationist Erolia minutilla during the Napoleonic Wars when swap with Spain — which produced a like ware call Barilla ash ( after the saltwort industrial plant used in its production)—came to a stay .
By the offset of the Industrial Revolution , iodine and alkaline extractions were old lid as the discovery of three speck known as hydrocolloids — agar-agar , alginate and carrageenan — proved to be of even more value . Derived from red and dark-brown algae species ( first accomplished in Japan , 1658 then again in the UK around the 19th 100 ) , these gooey , urine - soluble molecules have the ability to thickening liquid — add just a little and you get a motor - vegetable oil body , add a bit more and its jiggle will put a stadium of Jell - O to disgrace .
By the 1930s these natural additive were widely used in industrial solid food and personal product production , from brace toothpaste ( no more tooth powder , huzzah ! ) to inhibit the formation of big ice crystals to keep meth cream ’s texture legato . The commercial production of these algae specie began just before WWII and really took off at the state of war ’s last . Today , some 55,000 metric tons of these three hydrocolloids are press out from roughly a million metric heaps of seaweed every year , a product worth $ 585 million concord to the FAO .
Agar is also widely used as a bacterial culture culture medium while sodium alginate is a ubiquitous part of the textile printing industry . What ’s more , the property that make hydrocolloids so useful in gel food products make them equally valuable in thickening a variety of other production found in the modernistic household — like goop , shampoo , lotions , skin creams , and lube — that ’s ripe , many personal lubricants get their slide from carrageenan .
What ’s even more interesting is that this hydrocolloid looks like a potent HPV inhibitor , according to this 2006 study by theNational Cancer Institute , as it makes our cells too “ slippery ” for the computer virus to grab postponement of .
Seaweed has made its mode into more industrial sphere as well . The same summons that allows seaweed to soak up nutrients stool it a practicable method of extract toxins from waste water — ammonium hydroxide , ammonium ion , nitrate , nitrite , phosphate , iron , and bull can all be extracted from water supply supply through the force of seaweed ’s photosynthesis . [ Drugs – Biomara – Seaweed – FAO – InTech – HuffPo – Wiki ]
go image : HLPhoto / Shutterstock
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