Seaweed has:

• 10 x the calcium of cows milk
• 2 x the vitamin C of oranges
• 50 x the iron of spinach

The Japanese have treasured it as a valuable food source for centuries so why have we been so slow to embrace it? I suppose personally it’s a blend of cultural history and personal history. On the cultural side seaweed has been snubbed as the poor mans fertiliser and in years gone by it was harvested and rotted down as a manure for farms. Personally I spent a lot of my childhood messing about on the foreshore and seaweed tends to bloom close to unsavoury areas, so in my mind I think there was an association. I’m the first to admit that this is a crazy notion, however childhood associations are hard to shift and even diving in pristine kelp forests has not shifted my prejudice!

Reading up on the characteristics of seaweeds as a food source has however shaken my anti-seaweed position. I was amazed that it outranks the stalwarts Milk, Spinach & Oranges for various nutritional elements. I’m going to investigate further and report back…