LONG before we knew that Japanese sushi was a rice roll wrapped in dried seaweed, humankind had been eating seaweed since ancient times. Just as the land provides us with nutritious fruits and vegetables for food, our planet’s oceans also provide nutrient-packed sea vegetables and plants to sustain life. Early civilisations used to live near the sea in order to easily obtain seaweed not only for food, but for medicine.
The Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and people from Southeast Asia have been eating sea vegetables for thousands of years in soups and stir fry. Even people in Western countries had a tradition of eating seaweed as broths and used as a natural source of salt for cooking.
The west coast of Scotland has had abundant supply of nutrient-rich seaweed since the days of the caveman, with seaweed an extensive part of the diet for those living in coastal communities. Seaweed is also one of the main staple foods for fish, seals and polar bears.
So what’s so special about seaweed that nearly every ocean species includes this sea vegetable in their algae-rich diet?
Medicine from the sea
Seaweed is one of the healthiest foods on our planet, loaded with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are uniquely found in the sea and not on land. Seaweed is rich in iodine and sodium alginate, both of which are effective in protecting our body from disease and a vital part of a healthy diet.
As the ocean covers more than 70 per cent of the planet and is home to millions of living species, the sea is like a giant underwater farm filled with foods that sustain life.
The ancestral iTaukei had access to seaweed foods like the hairy golden lumi, nama sea grapes and the lettuce-looking red seaweed. The Japanese, who have one of the most ocean-rich diets of any culture, eat many varieties of seaweed like kombu, wakame and nori.
These ancient civilisations learned that seaweed not only provides a source of natural salt and seasoning, but eating vegetables from the sea also helped to prolong life and prevent disease.
Japanese women consume a diet high in iodine-rich seaweed with an iodine intake 25 times higher than the average non-Japanese woman. Japanese women also have breast cancer rates roughly one-third of those found in American women, which researchers link to a seaweed-rich diet. As we learn more about how iodine functions in the body, research is revealing connections between diet, environment, and the rise of thyroid, breast cancer, and immune health problems in women.
Seaweed improves the flavour of food
Heston Blumenthal, the British celebrity chef who gave the world bacon and egg ice cream, has suggested that seaweed should be used to make hospital food taste better instead of adding more salt. Hospital food is far from the most tastiest or exotic, but adding seaweed to recipes has helped provide a good source of natural salt as well as iodine.
Seaweed is also a food that imparts umami flavours, the Japanese term for the fifth taste after sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Umami is the penetrating savoury taste found in foods like parmesan cheese, soy sauce, tomatoes and shiitake mushrooms. One of chef Blumenthal’s creative seaweed recipes is for a shepherd’s pie filled with minced lamb and seaweed that appears on British Airways menus, as well as scrambled eggs, tarts and bread. Eating food at 35,000 feet in the air numbs more than a third of your tastebuds, but the addition of seaweed helps to bring out flavours in once-dull dishes.
Seaweed in Asian cuisine
Examine any Japanese or Korean restaurant menu and you will find seaweed used in sushi rolls, salads, stir fry and soups. Whether black, green, brown or red, Asian cuisine uses all different variety of dried and fresh sea vegetables.
Known as the “birthday soup” in Korea, miyuk gook seaweed soup is given to mothers recovering from childbirth and is made from boiled dried seaweed.
The Japanese have many soups based on dashi stock powder, which is made from kombu seaweed, and forms the base for miso soup, clear broths and noodle soups. Seaweed is used extensively in Japanese salads and of course, nori sushi rolls. And the Chinese have many recipes for stir fried seaweed and seaweed rich soups including today’s recipe of pork ribs, ginger, green melon and seaweed that is packed full of vitamins and minerals from both the land and sea.
Eating from the sea for health
It seems crazy, if not unimaginable, that Pacific islanders do not eat as much seaweed and sea vegetables as the Japanese, as we are surrounded by sea and an abundance of seaweed across the islands.
Traditional Fijian cuisine does include nama sea grapes with kokoda and waitomtom, and the delicious lumi vakalolo uses the gold lumi seaweed as a natural gelatin to turn coconut milk into a jelly. But Indo-Fijian and European-Fijian cuisine is devoid of any seaweed, meaning that more than half the population is missing out on the natural, iodine-rich super food in their daily diet.
Fiji has been exporting varieties of seaweed to Asian countries including the malaria-fighting red seaweed, which has shown promise in treating the mosquito-born disease. A locally owned Fiji company, Pacific Seaweed, is also commercially harvesting and exporting bird nest seaweed, seaweed salt and nama sea grapes or sea caviar around the world to countries that know the health benefits of eating seaweed everyday. With non-communicable diseases now a sad part of daily Fijian life, our ocean’s farms are beckoning us to eat more seasonal vegetables from the sea for food, sustenance and medicine.
* Lance Seeto is the award winning chef and food writer based on Castaway Island Fiji. Follow his culinary journeys at www.lanceseeto.com
