*This post is dedicated to AL.ME’s #1 fan – Thank you Saba! 

A few years back I visited a little island off of the coast of Zhuhai (China) and found an elderly couple collecting seaweed. They were bending over and reaching around rocks that were covered in barnacles and salty sea grass. When I asked why they were collecting this brownish, bumpy seaweed and putting it into big plastic bags they said, “We’re going to make soup with it.” And I just thought… Chinese people have horrible taste buds… Slimy seaweed in homemade soup must taste awful!

But then a couple months ago I was on the phone with my mom who was walking along a beach near her winter home in Florida. She was looking for sharks teeth, as she does most mornings, when she bumped into a fellow snow bird gathering seaweed into a shopping bag. When she asked what he was doing he said that he was a doctor and that the seaweed has great medicinal properties. By the end of their chat, she had realized she was talking with a doctor who gives speeches around the country on cancer prevention. And this man in particular was sending all of the seaweed he collected to his brother’s clinic in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

What they do is boil the seaweed until it creates a broth which cools and becomes a gel. Research done at the University of Florida suggests that by consuming seaweed this way you will “raise antioxidant enzyme levels that enhance your body’s ability to prevent cancer and inflammatory disease. Antioxidants protect the body from free radicals and molecules that can damage cells and lead to chronic health problems over time.”

Here’s a video reporting what researchers at UF have found about the benefits of seaweed in your diet. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the seaweed found off the coast of Florida seems to be particularly beneficial in staving off prostate cancer – the most common cancer in men.

 Where do you get it?

Much of what you find on store shelves is imported from Asia which is cheap and often processed. (International shipping puts additional stress on our oceans which negatively impacts sea life.) You’ll find lots of Asian markets with Korean and Japanese snack foods containing dried, salty seaweed. (Kids in these countries often just eat sheets of seaweed as a snack after school!) On the other hand, you could choose from many options available domestically. Commercial seaweed cultivation in America is not new and harvesting seaweed is a growing business.

Take Maine for example – In 2012 alone, 15 million pounds of seaweed was harvested there, which is double what was harvested in 2007. Unfortunately, the state is now grappling with the issue of how much can be harvested freely from rocks along the coast and how much should remain in order to preserve the local ecosystems. Much of the harvest is dried, milled, and sent to factories to become fertilizer, animal feed, or nutritional supplements. A plan for how to manage “rockweed” collection will be determined by the state legislature this year. However, there are still responsible options for buying your seaweed locally.

Maine Coast Sea Vegetables is a company selling “sustainably harvested and certified organic” seaweed products. They are dedicated to the rediscovery of this ancient super food and have been around since 1971. This is the kind of home-grown, sustainable behavior that can be a solution to the problem of over-harvesting along our coastlines.

On the Pacific coast, you can visit Rising Tide Sea Vegetables, which harvests their seaweed in environmentally friendly ways. On their FAQ page there is an explanation of how their hand-harvested product is different from machine-harvested, factory seaweed sourced from Asia and shipped over. Although I’m sure there is plenty of hand-harvested seaweed coming from Asian coastal areas too.

If you care to support the American Sea Vegetable business, I’d also suggest buying this wonderful product from one of these companies. Enjoy!

NOTE: The recipe for the seaweed soup pictured above can be found at Korean Bapsang. Another awesome recipe can be found at Dining with Outlaws.

A popular request I get is related to the medicinal use of tea. I’m finally writing this article after discussing this topic with various Chinese friends who have nearly 20 years of experience in the tea business. After discussions with them and other trusted tea connoisseurs I’m ready to post on this topic. I suggest reading a previous post about understanding the world of tea in order to get more familiar with the major varieties of tea.

You’ll find that two major substances in tea do most of the leg work: epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and polyphenol. Remember: I’m not a doctor and the following is a collection of information told by friends, which I’ve cross-referenced with scientific studies.

Dieting: Pu’er Tea is known as the most effective of the major tea varieties for metabolizing fat, which is why it is often a major part of diet tea concoctions sold commercially. It isn’t a silver bullet to weight loss, but should be included as a supplement to your weight loss or dieting regimen. Pu’er Tea also has great benefits to combat heart disease, see below. Also see my overview and disambiguation of major teas here.

Cleansing and Digestion:  From a Chinese perspective, “cleansing” means the process of pulling oil from your intestines. It doesn’t mean you should have diarrhea, but a person eating an oily-food diet will have better cleansing results. The precursor to cleansing is actually an improvement in digestion. Hopefully this serves to clarify what “cleansing teas” on the market should actually do.

Cancer and Degenerative Diseases: The most useful time to consume tea for the purpose of combating cancer is before the cancer in question has arrived. Tea, Green Tea in particular, is more effective with digestive and urinary tract cancers, however, there is a long list of other cancers that have been inhibited with animal testing, including:”lung, forestomach, esophagus, duodenum, pancreas, liver, breast, colon, and skin cancers”[*]

The immune system gets a boost from what The Green Tea Book articulates as the “secret ingredient”of Green tea, which is its high content of polyphenol (a phytonutrient). For people who crave details, the reason polyphenols are effective combatants to potential cancers is due to their high amounts of antioxidants. Basically, antioxidants prevent free radicals from flipping out all over the body and kicking off chain-reaction scavenging for reactive cells.[*] (In a nut shell free radicals damage cells, which can cause a range of problems from aging to cancer.)

A 2007 study done in China shows that Alzheimers and Parkinson‘s patients could have benefits from the polyphenol of Green Tea, because it  “may protect neurons against the detrimental effects of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO)…” Basically, with enough pure green tea extract (EGCG), it could inhibit the death of neurons which causes these degeneration, leading to Alzheimers and Parkinson’s.

The following are specific studies that I’ve grouped here and linked to their respective sources.

Heart Disease: There is a “preventative effect…on coronary heart disease, high blood cholesterol , and high blood pressure…” according to a 2000 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Skin Damage: Topical applications of green tea extracts (EGCG) have protective effects on UVA- and UVB-induced skin damage (photoaging and carcinogenesis) [*]

Lung Cancer: “Among smokers, those who did not drink green tea at all were more than 12 times as likely to develop lung cancer than those who drank at least a cup a day.” (Read more in this BBC review of the study) Of course, quitting smoking makes more sense…

Stress: A study released in 2010 by University College London shows that black tea consumption after a stressful event can reduce levels of the stress hormone “cortisol”. [*]

Stroke: In 2009, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted research which found that “drinking three or more cups of tea per day can reduce the risk of suffering a stroke by as much as 21 per cent.” [*]