These Health Experts Want Pizza and Hot Dogs to Be Made With Seaweed

Yum?

Some of you probably get your seaweed intake from sushi every once in awhile, but it’s doubtful that any of us are making it a point to eat seaweed every single day. However, biophysics researchers at the University of Southern Denmark suggest that seaweed should be a dietary staple. In fact, according to their estimates, we should each be eating about five to 10 grams of seaweed per day.

What’s so special about the edible marine algae? A lot of things, actually. The new research analyzed the dietary profile of 35 different species of seaweed, finding a number of health benefits. Seaweed contains high amounts of healthy nutrients like antioxidants, minerals, essential amino acids, dietary fiber, and polyunsaturated fatty acids.

By consuming seaweed everyday, the Danish researchers believe that the impact of obesity and certain health conditions would be significantly reduced.

“Certain substances in seaweed may be important for reducing cardiovascular diseases,” said Ole G. Mouritsen, a biophysics researcher at the University of Southern Denmark and lead author of the report. "We think this knowledge should be available for society and also be put to use.”

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In the new study, the authors suggest that incorporating seaweed into daily diets shouldn’t be left to the consumer — the food industry should implement the appropriate changes to make seaweed a more common ingredient in the foods we regularly buy. Even processed foods like hot dogs, frozen pizzas, dried pasta, and fast food could gain more nutritional value if small traces of seaweed were added.

Although Mouritsen can guess how much seaweed we each need per day, he says, “It is difficult to determine how much seaweed a person should consume to benefit from its good qualities,” said Mouritsen. “Five to 10 grams of dried seaweed per day is my estimate.”

So how are we all going to go from eating virtually no seaweed to chowing down five or 10 grams a day? It doesn’t have to be complicated. Mouritsen and the other researchers say that this daily amount could easily be attained if the food industry helps out. For example, if just 5 percent of the flour in pizza dough was replaced with dried and granulated seaweed, we could be getting our seaweed intake without even making drastic changes to our diets.

But don’t go running off the the beach and filling up buckets of seaweed to snack on. There are thousands of types of seaweed, and not all of them are edible in the slightest. In fact, some species contain large traces of iodine, and another type, hijiki, even contains arsenic, according to ScienceAlert. Some of the commonly consumed seaweeds include dulse, sargassum, and wakame.

However, a little bit of seaweed could reap a whole lot of benefits in our bodies.

“We know that many people have difficulty distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy food,” the authors wrote in the study. "By adding seaweed to processed foods, we can make food healthier. In many cases we also get tastier food, and it may also help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.”