Small team successfully farms red seaweed, one of the most powerful healing superfoods on Earth

Monday, February 02, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: phytonutrients, superfoods, sea vegetables

>From a nutritional point of view, there's nothing healthier for the human body than sea vegetables and simple plants grown in water (like chlorella, one of my favorites). These sea vegetables like as sea kelp or seaweed offer extraordinary properties and health-enhancing compounds that simply aren't found in plants grown on land. Seaweed, for example, is high in both macrominerals and trace minerals, and it has a unique polysaccharide structure that is widely used against diseases like cancer and diabetes. These polysaccharides, found in brown seaweed, green seaweed and red seaweed, are known to fight diabetes, regulate blood sugar, lubricate the digestive tract, shrink tumors, and much more. They are truly the most powerful superfoods on the planet.

And yet most Americans wouldn't touch seaweed with a six-foot pole. But populations in Japan, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands have depended on seaweed as a staple of their diet for literally thousands of years. It may be part of the reason the Japanese, for example, are far healthier than most Americans: they frequently eat seaweed in the form of sushi and other traditional Japanese dishes.

The most highly sought-after sea vegetable, according to some, has been red seaweed. But excessive wildcrafting (harvesting) of it has led to a depletion in red seaweed populations. Until now, no one has been able to successfully revive these populations or farm red seaweed for mass consumption.

Today, however, one team, lead by an expert in marine agronomy from the University of Arizona, has been able to plant and harvest entire crops of red seaweed, making them available to commercial purchasers. It's a notable success story, not only because it creates a new industry for the people of the rather remote island of Molokai, but more importantly because it results in the availability of a dietary supplement that offers extraordinary healing properties and the ability to both prevent and reverse serious diseases.

This is good medicine, it's good for the environment, it's good for humans, it's good for the ocean, and it's good for business. You don't find that combination very often these days.