Researchers in NUI Galway are discovering the nutritional and medicinal benefits of Irish seaweeds that have useful anti-viral properties, writes Dick Ahlstrom
Does a plate of sea spaghetti and spicy garlic tomato sound appetising? How about sweet kombu with soy sauce and honey, or maybe wakame soup? If so you would be tucking into a meal made largely of Irish sea vegetables, plants more usually known as seaweed.
These mightn't currently feature on your favourite dinner menu but researchers at the Irish Seaweed Centre in NUI Galway's Martin Ryan Institute would like to change your mind about seaweed. They also point out that these same seaweeds have potential as nutritional food additives and in new biomedicines.
Ingredients taken from seaweed have long been used as food additives to enhance texture, for example carrageen, Chondrus crispus, for thickening foods such as yoghurt and ice cream. The centre is interested in taking this onto a higher plain however, including seaweed to improve nutritional value.
Set up in 1992, the centre is studying the nutritional and medicinal benefits of the common sea plants that ring our coasts. "We are pretty unique as a research centre," says its manager, Dr Stefan Kraan.
The centre has an informative website (www.irishseaweed.com) where the recipes mentioned above and others can be seen. The site also provides details of its research and lists its analysis of the nutritional content of common sea vegetables.
Laminaria digitata for example, a form of common kelp, contains protein and carbohydrates but also the B vitamins, vitamin C, calcium, iodine, iron, magnesium and manganese. "The B vitamin group is very well represented in many seaweeds," says Dr Kraan, something that makes seaweed a potential replacement for the synthesised nutrient additives put into cereals and other foods.
Seaweeds are being studied for their potential as "functional foods", he explains. "A functional food is adding vitamins or minerals or other molecules that have a benefit and recovered from a natural source like seaweed."
The centre has five research staff and recently won two EU research contracts worth a combined €250,000. "As a functional food you can extract the essential substances from the seaweed or dry it, powder it and use it in the food," says Kraan.
The cornflakes you eat in the morning typically have synthesised added nutrients. "You could easily replace that and use powdered seaweed mixed with the cornflakes before they are made to increase the value of the original product," explains Kraan.
This approach is being used in an effort to improve the nutritional value of feed used on fish farms, he adds. The seaweed replaces synthetic ingredients, providing something closer to a fish's normal diet, and "to make it a more natural, sustainable resource", he says.
"The other area is in biomedicines and biochemistry," says Kraan. The Centre is studying two substances from Laminaria digitata of particular interest, Laminaran and Fucoidan. Both are polysaccharides that have anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties and are able to boost the body's immune system.
"We are trying to get into that kind of research," he says. "It is a whole new area that has opened up in the last 10 years."
Bord Iascaigh Mhara is also interested in developing the seaweed industry in this way. It recently employed a full-time seaweed development officer, Mairtin Walsh. Earlier this summer it held what it described as the "world's first seminar" on seaweed and functional foods.
The great advantage of many of these sea-vegetables is they are in abundant supply right around our coasts. They are easy to harvest and represent a renewable resource that causes no harm to the environment.