Seaweed emerging as an important diet supplement for Americans

• A type of vegetation that can often be found washed ashore on beaches may soon emerge as a new player in the field of cancer-fighting foods.
• A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that a diet containing kelp seaweed lowered levels of the potent sex hormone estradiol in rats, and raised hopes that it might decrease the risk of estrogen-dependent diseases such as breast cancer in humans.
• Prior studies have shown that Japanese women have longer menstrual cycles and lower serum estradiol levels than their Western counterparts, which researchers say may contribute to their lower rates of breast, endometrial and ovarian cancers.
• "Brown kelp seaweed makes up more than 10 percent of the Japanese diet," said Christine Skibola, assistant research toxicologist at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health and lead author of the study.
• The researchers say that the type of kelp used in this study, bladderwrack seaweed (Fucus vesiculosus), is closely related to wakame and kombu, the brown seaweeds that are most commonly consumed in Japan.
• "The most profound thing I found was that two women with endometriosis and a lot of menstrual irregularities experienced significant improvement in their symptoms after three months of taking 700 milligrams of seaweed capsules per day," said Skibola.
• One group was fed a high daily dose of 70 milligrams of dried, powdered kelp for four weeks, while a second group was fed a low daily dose of 35 milligrams.
• To ensure that all the kelp was eaten, Skibola and study co-author John Curry, a UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow in molecular and cell biology, sprinkled the powdered kelp onto apple wedges, one of the rats' favorite foods.