Seaweed may not be something you think of as a food, unless you’ve had it as part of a Chinese takeaway – but even then it’s not something you’d think of as a healthy food! However, not only is seaweed edible and very beneficial to your overall wellbeing, it can actually be used as part of your anti-ageing programme.
In fact, Dr. Mao Shing Ni, bestselling author, doctor of Oriental Medicine and board certified anti-ageing expert, cites seaweed as one of the top 10 foods for health and longevity wellness in his new book, Secrets of Longevity Cookbook. He says this is because, during his 25 years of studying centenarians, the same 10 foods kept recurring again and again in the diets of long-living individuals – and seaweed was right up there with the best of them!
Seaweed is a top longevity food packs a powerful nutrient punch that very few other foods can match. In many types of seaweed, there is more calcium than you would find in cheese, more iron than you would find in beef, and more protein than you would find in eggs. Seaweed has roots that penetrate into sea beds that are filled with trace minerals, which are no longer present on land, and so many consider seaweed to be the king of vegetables. Indeed, seaweed has been a staple in Asian diets for thousands of years.
There’s more to seaweed than the shredded, fried variety you get in a takeaway (which, let’s face it, is basically glorified cabbage). There are more than 20 types of edible seaweed, such as nori, kombu, hijiki, wakame, dulce, chlorella, and Irish moss. Complementary wellness experts believe that edible seaweed even has healing properties, helping to heal almost anything and everything. Seaweed is supposed to treat cancer, lower cholesterol, reduce inflammation, dissolve tumours and cysts, detoxify heavy metals, reduce water retention, and aid in weight loss.
Kombu seaweed, in particular, is known for helping your body in detoxification. The vegetable comes in long, thick brown strips, and contains powerful trace minerals. Your body needs the high content of iodine in Kombu, for example, to produce two important thyroid hormones that control your metabolism. As your body doesn’t produce this mineral, many people are deficient in iodine and so kombu can come to the rescue!
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