Sea Vegetation - WholeFood Nutrient

• add small amounts of granules or cut, bite sized pieces to your favorite soups, salads, stews, pasta, grains, sandwiches, veggie dishes, stir-fry and other favorite recipes. Use as an entree, seasoning or stock base. Make a weekly "Broth of Vigor" or, as the Japanese call this flavorful soup base - Dashi. Each package comes with instructions and recipe suggestions.

Remember that dried sea vegetables are a highly vital wild food and provide super-concentrated nutrition - a little goes a long way. For a variety of Atlantic sea vegetables with a multitude of recipes and uses, we suggest our "Ocean Delight Sampler" - comes complete with maximum versatility, nutrition and taste. For ease of use and as a salt substitute shake on Kelp Granules. Our nutritionally power packed "Tri-Blend Sea Mix" is already chopped and mixed for easily adding to any recipe. Use sparingly - as most recipes use less than 1/4 oz (1 tablespoon) per serving! One pound dry seaweed equals 10 pounds of wet freshly harvested seaweed. Rehydrate and watch it expand!

Seaweeds like KELP, DIGITATA, ALARIA, NORI and DULSE can be softened in a marinade that includes vinegar or lemon juice (to help release minerals into solution) together with other liquids and sweeteners like tamari, ginger, seasonings, juice, honey, etc. The longer the seaweeds marinate, the softer they become. Keep refrigerated until consumed.

Most sea vegetables are sometimes rinsed and usually soaked in fresh water before use, but this process may be unnecessary with some varieties . Dulse, for instance, may be eaten right out of the bag as a healthy, "salty" snack. Alaria, Nori or Digitata may be roasted in a low temperature oven until crisp and then crumbled or ground for easy use as a condiment or soup & veggie mix. All the varieties, including Kelp, may be lightly soaked and simmered to re-hydrate and tenderize, and then cut into attractive shapes and sizes and added to any favorite, soup, stew, salad, pasta or grain recipe.

Your body, which is made up mostly of water needs to hydrate food in order to transact with it, so why not give it a break? Unless you really want a salty condiment, use recipes that involve water- hydration, marinating, soaking or simmering. However, the choice is yours: raw, rinsed, to heat or not to heat, to cook or not to cook, soak, simmer or even roast..... truly, your choice is limitless.

Many Sea Vegetation and SeaWeed customers are proponents of the Living Foods and Raw Foods diet, often touted as the ultimate vegan, organic and plant–based diet. These folks do not cook their food, thus preserving all the naturally occurring enzymes, which are destroyed at temperatures above 105° F. People who eat raw and live foods claim increased vitality, health, and spiritual connection, while leaving less of an environmental footprint. 

All our "SeaWeed Man" wild-crafted sea veggies are raw, whole leaf, untoasted, and air-dried under low temp conditions - less than 80° F thus, the original enzymes are unchanged and therefore suitable for a pure Raw Foodist diet.

Sea vegetables are sometimes rinsed, usually soaked, marinated or simmered in fresh water before use but, Dulse, for instance, may be eaten right out of the bag as a healthy, "salty" snack. If you are a raw foodist, you will discover you can chew "soft dulse". Soft dulse is bone-dry dulse that has been allowed to reabsorb some humidity from the air. This kicks off an enzyme process that softens the cell walls of the dulse, much like making fermented foods.

Most varieties of Sea Vegetation are easily cut into salads, added to cold dishes or hot soups, and in the roasted crumbled flake form are easily blended in drinks or sprinkled on everything. The 5 varieties of whole Sea Vegetables we offer are KELP, DIGITATA, ALARIA, U.S. NORI, & U.S. DULSE. All may be eaten uncooked, right out of the bag but suggestions for some varieties are to soak, simmer or marinate prior to use. (As a comparison, the traditional Japanese sea veggies arame, hijiki, and wakame are all processed with heat above 105° F - in fact the arame and hijiki are often boiled or blanched prior to hot drying, destroying many of the beneficial enzymes and nutrients.)

Brendan Brazier, Canadian Ironman tri–athlete, raw foodist and author states in his book, "THRIVE, A Guide to Optimal Health & Performance Through Plant–based Whole Foods" that, "Seaweed is an exceptionally good source of minerals and trace elements. DULSE and un-toasted NORI, for example, provides the perfect mineral complex in a natural form. The daily consumption of natural–source minerals and trace elements is important for optimal health. Especially significant for active people, adequate mineral consumption allows the cells to stay hydrated longer, thereby improving endurance. Sea vegetables are a superior source, as they are also chlorophyll–rich and alkaline–forming."

What about the whitish surface powder? To rinse or not rinse?  If you're concerned about the white powdery substance on the surface of stored Sea Vegetation, don't worry! Sometimes as these sea veggies dry out a whitish powder will appear; this powder consists of precipitated salts and sugars and is safe to eat - you can rinse or use as is.

In KELP, the principle sugar is mannitol and the salts are predominantly potassium and sodium. Mannitol is much less "sweet" than fructose, sucrose, glucose or pentose, and even less sweet than complex sugars found in brown rice syrup, yet it still adds a subtle flavor quality. This, along with the high mineral component and the naturally occurring glutamic acid is why kelp makes beans taste so great, cook so quickly and digest so easily.

This whitish powder also appears on DULSE sometimes, but not as often. It seems harder to manage the osmotic process in the brown sea weeds (KELP, DIGITATA and ALARIA) than the reds (DULSE and NORI), perhaps because the brown sea veggies are thicker. While we are more skilled than ever at handling sea veggies from harvest to packaging, our sea veggies are not processed to the point of total control. This is actually one of their unique selling points: minimally processed whole foods, whole leaf, enzymes intact.

In any case, a light rinse before use lessens sea vegetables' salty taste. You will lose some sodium and potassium salts, but very little if any calcium, iron, magnesium, etc. Remember to save the rinse water for cooking. 

• Sea veggies are dried and rich in mineral salts and keep well unless subjected to a lot of moisture, heat and/or direct light. Direct light will bleach the plants over time and may have some effect on nutritional quality. Most Sea Vegetation has a shelf life of at least 2 years at room temperature in tightly sealed container out of direct sunlight. The shelflife of soft dulse, kept cool, is 1 year. The strong taste and odor of Sea Vegetation may surprise some people but storing in tightly sealed glass or plastic will help keep the odor from permeating the kitchen or pantry. Sea veggies also readily absorb odors, so keep them tightly sealed. If sea veggies are stored in conditions of excessive moisture or heat, mold or deterioration may occur which is readily visible as discoloration or an odor of mildew. Recommended storage containers are the re-sealable bags or glass jars with screw top lids. Sometimes as plants dry out a whitish powder will appear; this powder consists of precipitated salts and sugars and is safe to eat - you can rinse or use as is, however it is not a good idea to rinse sea veggies unless you plan to use it immediately. Do not rinse and store or soak and store, unless you refrigerate or use within 24 hrs. If a visual inspection doesn't indicate any problems, the product should be fine to use safely.

IDENTITY PRESERVED, SUSTAINABLE & WILD-CRAFTED

Larch Hanson - The SeaWeed Man

Seaweeds, sea vegetables. The words we use lead us toward different attitudes, actions, and results. Seaweeds grow wild, developing their vitality in a turbulent ocean. People sometimes try to domesticate them through aquaculture. The aquaculturist always wants to set up his or her gear in quiet water, protected from surf and storms, but that inevitably weakens the vitality and the actual form of the seaweed. We develop our strength and our vitality through action and resistance. Seaweeds are somewhat the same. Quiet water tends to be stagnant and polluted by boat traffic. Seaweeds grown in quiet stagnation tend to be rather lifeless and uninteresting.

People who have been eating aquacultured seaweed comment to me, "Your wild seaweed tastes so much better! I never realized how rich the smells and flavors could be!" My job as a seaweed harvester is to find the wildest seaweeds, far from civilization, harvest them at the peak of their vitality, and dry them at low temperatures (less than 80° F) to bone dry perfection within 48 hours of harvesting them. When you receive a shipment, I want you to first think of them as wild and vital, like the land weeds that always grow back in the same places every year independent of our help. Once you have appreciated them in this way, then use the many varied recipes to integrate them into your diet. When they have been nicely prepared, perhaps then they can be called sea vegetables.

1. My bay is free of boat traffic from October through May when I start the kelp harvest. In the summertime, lobstermen pursue the migration of lobsters into the bay, but then I'm working away from them on the islands.

2. There are no cities, factories, harbors, or nuclear power plants on my bay. Smithsonian Institute studied my bay and they said that there's a wide diversity of life forms, indicating low levels of pollution. On a quiet day, I can see down to bottom at a depth of 30 feet.

3. I build my own boats from wood, and I coat them with vegetable oil. They turn dark with age, like old salad bowls. The tow boat has several bulkheads and is powered by a four cycle outboard that doesn't mix oil with gas. The separate container boats are rowed away from the tow boat to the harvest sites, then rowed back to the tow boat.

4. My hand-selected harvest is brought to bone-dry perfection within 48 hours of harvest at temperatures below 80° F. I use solar and wind drying methods the first day, and a solar/fanned drying room with wood back-up heat on the second day. Long plants are hung up on lines like laundry, small plants are dried on untreated white nylon netting stretched on frames at waist level.

5. Organic certification is the New Age Mafia, ignoring water quality amongst other technicalities.

A SPECIAL NOTE ON NORI: Aquaculturists who grow nori tuck their nets away in quiet water, and this inevitably leads to pollution from the buildup of petrochemicals floating on the surface of the water, the result of too much boat traffic. There's simply not enough tidal flush and flow in aquacultural settings to grow the same level of purity and quality as wild nori. Once you've tasted wild nori......nori that hasn't been tampered with...... you won't go back to using aquacultured nori that has been chopped up and made into paper through a heat process, then stored in the package for months before coming to market.

A SPECIAL NOTE ON KELP: Harvesting digitata kelp from a low-sided boat is a bit like playing rodeo. Grab the plant below the many-bladed frond (just hold up your hand and imagine your hand is the frond and the short stipe is attached at your wrist) and hang on tight! while you saw away at the stipe with a serrated frozen food knife wrapped and bound with old wetsuit material so it's easy to grab and will float. Sometimes I feel my shoulder tugged in its socket, just like the cowboy hanging on to the lasso, roping calves. In my case, I have to watch out for breaking waves that can sink my boat. I'm playing at the edge of breakers, all the time. When the little boat eight foot boat is full (about eight bushels), I row back to the container boat and transfer the load. On a good new moon tide (a tide that goes out a foot lower than average low water), I will manage to do this five or six times.

A SPECIAL NOTE ON DULSE: Dulse outsells all other seaweeds. Dulse grows in my bay and along the coast of Nova Scotia, but in limited amounts. 95% of Dulse eaten in the world comes from Grand Manan Island located in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, Canada. Grand Manan Island is visible from the coast of Maine, so it is part of the Gulf of Maine system. Grand Manan is unique because it has intertidal boulders partially shaded by cliffs that are ideal for growing Dulse. Sometimes my Dulse comes from this region which is why I limit the availability.

Dr. Linda Rector Page, author and herbalist, writes in "Healthy Healing" that "Iodine is essential to life... it is an important element of alertness, and rapid brain activity, and a prime deterrent to arterial plaque. Iodine is also a key factor in the control and prevention of many endocrine deficiency conditions prevalent today, such as breast and uterine fibroids, tumors, prostate inflammation, adrenal exhaustion, and toxic liver and kidney states."

Some people are concerned about radioactive iodine in seaweed. "Seaweed Man" Larch Hanson states that, "Since none of our Seaweed selection grows near a nuclear reactor and for the fact that the harvested Sea Vegetation is stored for 60 days before being put on the market, all iodine 131 will have radioactively decayed anyway. As long as the body has adequate iodine 127, it won’t absorb iodine 131."

Unfortunately, not all iodine is good for us and the human thyroid cannot distinguish between life sustaining iodine-127 and radioactive iodine-131. On this subject Ryan Drum further warns, "The real reason for making sure that iodine consumption is at the high end is to insure a full body complement of iodine at all times as preventative medicine against nuclear or radiation contamination. A full body load of iodine 127 from seaweeds (or any source) will tend to allow the body to reject topical and air and food-source iodine 131, particularly from fresh milk." Another important reason to get plenty of sea vegetables' Iodine 127 into the thyroid is to prevent uptake of radioactive and toxic Iodine 131, which in modern times has a background presence in our food and air supply, and which is likely to be a major pollutant of a nuclear accident. By "loading" the thyroid with healthy Iodine, we can maintain our health even if fallout levels increase dramatically. On a cautionary note, Dr. Drum advises that those people who are iodine sensitive should avoid the northern deep-water kelps that have exceptionally large amounts of iodine. Sea vegetables such as Dulse, Nori, and Bladderwrack have lower concentrations of iodine and may provide a good alternative.

In general, brown sea vegetables (kelps) offer more bio-available organic iodine than red sea vegetables (dulse and nori). Whole leaf KELP (Laminaria longicruris) has approximately 450 mcg. (micrograms or parts per million) iodine per gram. Our DIGITATA kelp (Laminaria digitata), has even higher amounts, about 5000 mcg. In comparison, DULSE contains 50 mcg per gram. These amounts are approximations as there is variation depending on season of harvest and the age of plant.

The 'SeaWeed Man' makes the following comments: "A researcher in Texas called me and asked for samples of all my seaweeds. He was studying iodine so that an iodine supplement could be developed. "Why?" I asked. "Well," he replied, "there really aren't good supplements for iodine available to the general public. Your seaweed research covers the subject pretty well, but now we have the perchlorate problem." "Yes," I said, "I've heard a little bit about perchlorate. That's the chemical that's associated with rocket fuel, and it's also released in a car when the air bag is activated. It's associated with explosives, right?" "Right," he said, "and there's a lagoon of stale rocket fuel in Nevada, 250 million gallons, that is leaching into the Colorado River. The Colorado River irrigates the southwest U.S. and Mexico. 30% of this country's produce is grown in that water system. The broad leaf vegetables like lettuce take up perchlorate, and perchlorate blocks transport of iodine to the thyroid. So we have an epidemic of hypothyroidism in this country, people who are overweight with sluggish metabolisms." I thought for a moment, and then I said. "So that's why, when the Challenger blew up and was scattered all across Texas, people were told that if they discovered a piece of the rocket, to report it but not to touch it." "Right," the researcher replied. "They were afraid of perchlorate contamination of people and water. They had divers in ponds, searching for pieces. It's nasty stuff." I said, "In my business, I encourage people to eat 3-5 grams of seaweed each day, to protect their thyroids. 3-5 grams is about the same weight as 3-5 paper clips. That's approximately three 'Ocean Delight Sampler' packs per person per year."

Finally, a cautionary note about getting too much of a good thing. We all need between 150 and 1,100 micrograms in our daily diets to keep our thyroids healthy and prevent uptake of radioactive Iodine. Healthy thyroids will "spill" unneeded iodine. But some people with sensitive thyroids, particularly nursing mothers, postmenopausal women, or anyone with an unusual thyroid dysfunction may have adverse reactions to excess dietary iodine (most often if you decrease the intake of dietary iodine the condition goes away.) Please consult with your health care practitioner if you have any questions about your consumption of iodine.

Iodine in Seaweed Protects the Thyroid from Radiation

Once upon a time, about a gazillion years ago, the animals in the sea with spinal cords decided to base their regulatory hormones upon stable Iodine 127. A bazillion years later, some of those animals decided to leave the sea and live on the land where Iodine 127 was not abundant. Land plants don't contain much iodine at all. So they developed thyroid glands and blood compounds that would conserve scarce Iodine 127. All went well, until some near-sighted nuclear scientists started splitting uranium atoms and creating radioactive Iodine 131 which concentrates through the food chain (from grass to cows to milk to humans, for instance) and can end up in the thyroid, burning it out, leaving people unable to self-regulate their lives. You see, Iodine 131 has a very short half-life of 8 days. That means that within a period of two months, it emits most of its radiation. And if that iodine 131 happens to be situated in the thyroid while it is emitting its radiation, it will do great damage to the thyroid gland. 25% of the women in this country, for instance, now have clinical symptoms of thyroid imbalance. Why is this happening?

Iodine is a member of the halide group of elements that includes bromine, chlorine, and fluorine. Compounds that contain these elements tend to displace iodine from the body. Modern people are exposed to bromated dough conditioners in commercially-produced bread, and bromine used in disinfectants (in hot tubs, for instance). Bleach in the laundry and at the swimming pool contains chlorine. Dentists use fluorides, and fluoride is used in toothpaste and drinking water. All of these sources of chemicals, and more, are exposing us to halides that displace iodine from our bodies. In the Southwest, the Colorado River system that irrigates the fields that produce 30% of the vegetables consumed in our country is contaminated by a lagoon of spent rocket fuel in Nevada that is leaching perchlorate into the water. Perchlorate is taken up by broad leaf veggies like lettuce, and it gets into the body and blocks transport of iodine to the thyroid. If an air bag goes off in your car, your air is immediately contaminated with perchlorate released by the explosive air bag.

There really aren't very good iodine supplements available to the public. If you read a material safety data sheet for potassium iodide, you will understand the negative side effects of long term use. The best long term strategy is to integrate seaweed into one's daily diet. Then your thyroid will always have adequate levels of stable Iodine 127 and will not take in radioactive Iodine 131. Digitata kelp has the highest iodine content, followed by kelp. Alaria has moderate levels of iodine. All of these are good sources of iodine, provided you don't roast them, releasing the iodine to the air. Learn a water-based method that will work for you. Make soup and drink the broth at the same time you eat the seaweed. Then your body will receive the iodine. If you are a raw foodist, make a smoothie that includes kelp. Nori and dulse don't contain much iodine, compared to kelp and alaria. Any commercial seaweed that is promoted as "tender" or "convenient" or "ready to eat" probably has been subjected to a heat process (parboiling, roasting) and thus the iodine content is lowered.