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A question often asked.  How do I know this product is ok?  I.e. can we be sure that the processes are ok and that there will be no foreign baddies in it? This seaweed is grown in the tropics / Philippines / somewhere foreign. I don’t trust the food source.

Seaweed is food. We are legally and morally required to ensure that food is good to eat.  In Australia about 4 million people a year get food poisoning, and in the USA the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that each year 48 million people get sick from a food-borne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. Researchers have identified more than 250 food-borne diseases. Most of them are infections, caused by a variety of bacteria, viruses, and parasites.

The last thing we want is to sell a food product that can make you ill.  We therefore have taken all steps available from planting to selling to remove risks. Every batch number can be tracked back to a GPS coordinate in the farming area.

• The seaweed is organically grown in the cleanest water we can grow seaweed. The Pacific Ocean stretches 13,000 km to the nearest landfall on the USA West Coast
• Seaweed is organic certified by the OCCP (Philippine organic certifying authority)
• We are completing full HACCP Accreditation by an international authority (JAS / ANZ)
• We are implementing ISO22000:2018 quality systems with policies and procedures more strict than most food producers.
• We use a full paddock to plate system (AgKonect) to enable full traceability.

Water Quality and Product Tests are undertaken on every batch

• Heavy metals  – Lead, Cadmium, Mercury
• Coliform
• Listeria
• Salmonella
• Moisture
• Iodine levels
• Staphylococcus

Testing of nutrient levels is done at regular intervals and research is underway to understand variation during different seasons.

Professor Lindsay Brown from the University of Southern Queensland and his research group came to the conclusion in 2017 that there was potential of Kappaphycus species as a functional food with application in the prevention of metabolic syndrome. They demonstrated that Kappaphycus may reverse metabolic syndrome through selective inhibition of obesogenic gut bacteria and promotion of health-promoting gut bacteria. There were no negative effects of Kappaphycus on any of the measured variables. More recent studies on another red seaweed Sarconema further confirm this.

A functional food is just food, but it also can provide a function.  That function is just like a drug.  E.g. Reduce inflammation, reduce blood pressure, be an appetite suppressant. Reduce fatty liver. Improve glucose tolerance.

Do not confuse a typical description of a functional food that is cheap simple food product, with additives. (such as margarine with added plant sterols). Functional foods are good whole natural foods. They just have additional functionality.

The group has been working for many years on a range of active plants including skins from mangostem, linseeds, achachairú (from South America), purple carrots, curcumin, Davidsons Plums, Queen Garnet plus and green coffee.

All these have the same outcomes. Rats that have metabolic syndrome, when fed a small amount of active products, reverse the effect of the obesity, hypertension, and impaired liver function.

Pacific Sea Moss is one of these natural products. Just food.

References

Wanyonyi S du Preez R Brown L Paul N Panchal S (2017) Kappaphycus alvarezii as a Food Supplement Prevents Diet-Induced Metabolic Syndrome in Rats. Nutrients 2017, 9, 1261; doi:10.3390/nu9111261   (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29149029)

du Preez R, Paul N, Mouatt P, Majzoub ME, Thomas T, Panchal SK, Brown L. 2020 Carrageenans from the Red Seaweed Sarconema filiforme Attenuate Symptoms of Diet-Induced Metabolic Syndrome in Rats. Mar Drugs. 2020 Jan 31;18(2). pii: E97. doi: 10.3390/md18020097.

Pacific Sea Moss is food. We make no claims as to the health benefits. We leave that to peer-reviewed evidence from researchers over the years; by looking at the Japanese and the contrast with the western world; and from increasing research interest in using the pacific sea moss.

Research data suggests 50 grams of fresh seaweed (5 grams of dry) has a material effect. More is better. But not too much.

There are many products in the market that claim health benefits.

We believe that eating whole food (albeit dry) provides nutritional and health benefits.

As Michael Polan says “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”

Even a decade ago, food author Michael Pollan was lecturing 2009 CDC scientists.

“The French paradox is that they have better heart health than we do (Americans) despite being a cheese-eating, wine-swilling, fois-gras-gobbling people,” Pollan said. “The American paradox is we are a people who worry unreasonably about dietary health yet have the worst diet in the world.”

In various parts of the world, Pollan noted, necessity has forced human beings to adapt to all kinds of diets.

“The Masai subsist on cattle blood and meat and milk and little else. Native Americans subsist on beans and maize. And the Inuit in Greenland subsist on whale blubber and a little bit of lichen,” he said. “The irony is, the one diet we have invented for ourselves — the Western diet — is the one that makes us sick.”

Snowballing rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the U.S. can be traced to an unhealthy diet. So how do we change?

Pollan says everything he’s learned about food and health can be summed up in seven words: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”Probably the first two words are most important. “Eat food” means to eat real food — vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and, yes, fish and meat — and to avoid what Pollan calls “edible food-like substances.”

Pollan has 7 suggestions about healthy food.

• Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. “When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes or eat something with 15 ingredients you can’t pronounce, ask yourself, “What are those things doing there?”  Seaweed has been a staple for tens of thousands of years!
• Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce. Seaweed. Pure. Simple. Nothing added. Nothing subtracted.
• Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. We would like you to eat fresh seaweed. Dry seaweed is the next best thing.
• Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. “There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food,” Seaweed was the supermarkets a long time ago.
• It is not just what you eat but how you eat. “Always leave the table a little hungry,” Pollan says. “Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, ‘Tie off the sack before it’s full.”  Seaweed.  Add to your daily diet. There is good evidence for weight loss as the seaweed makes you feel full.
• Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It’s a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. “Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?” Australian Aboriginals were eating seaweed before the Roman empire.
• Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

We make no medical claims. But we all understand seaweed is healthy. What you may not know is that peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown in countless studies on humans, animals and in test tubes that seaweed is healthy. BioSea Health provides seaweed as a simple way to consume food. Simply good healthy food.

For many, eating fresh seaweed is just not possible. We recommend a seaweed tablet.

Shipping

Shipping of fresh seaweed from places that it is farmed to consumers is just not possible. While we can ship bananas from the Philippines to the USA or from Ecuador to New Zealand, shipping fresh seaweed is not possible and all you would get is compost. Or worse. Generally, seaweed is dried or at worst reduced to semi-dried and then re-hydrated at serving in a supplemental seaweed tablet.

Drying

We dry the seaweed where it is grown. No spoilage. Controlled. Managed.

Convenience in Seaweed Tablet Supplements

Our society is based on convenience.  Do you want to learn how to prepare seaweed, and incorporate it into various recipes? Or just take a Pacific SeaMoss seaweed tablet whenever and wherever you want.

No Cooking Required

There is no food preparation required. A few tablets. Health is done.

I don’t like the taste

For some, seaweed is an acquired taste. It is called the umami. What does Umami taste like? Umami is a naturally occurring flavour enhancer, roughly meaning ‘deliciousness’ in Japanese. It is used to describe the pleasant savoury taste found in mushrooms, parmesan, and of course; Seaweed. And monosodium glutamate (MSG). Have you tried to feed mushrooms to children?  Or seaweed to westerners?

We make no medical claims. But we all understand seaweed is healthy. What you may not know is that peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown in countless studies on humans, animals and in test tubes that seaweed is healthy. BioSea Health provides seaweed as a simple way to consume food. Simply good healthy food.

Is eating seaweed safe?  The first recorded is Central Americans some 14,000 years ago. Egyptians were using seaweed to reduce swellings. The Celts in Europe ate seaweed. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans have eaten seaweed for 4,000 years. The Aboriginals in Australia have stories going back since the Dreamtime.

Is it ok to eat Pacific Sea Moss and is it safe?

What precautions do you need to take?

• Be particular about the species of seaweed you eat.
• In today’s polluted seas make sure that the levels of heavy metals (mercury, lead, cadmium) are not in the waters that the seaweed is grown in (We monitor carefully all our growing areas).
• Use modern technology to ensure the seaweed is free from bacteria and that you have full traceability and monitor the process from paddock to plate.

We recommend to use BioSea Health Seaweed supplement tablets because of all the seaweed we process is controlled, managed, tested it to make sure our seaweeds have no acquired metal elements, and we make sure it has no spoilage. We processed it according to best HACCP practice. In supplement tablets, you don’t need to cook and prepare it. The supplement tablet gives you convenience. You can bring it anywhere and whenever you want it.

Arguments that Carrageenan is not safe

There is some commentary that carrageenan is not safe. When carrageenan is processed with acid, it creates a substance called degraded carrageenan, or poligeenan, which carries significant health warnings. Poligeenan is an inflammatory substance. Researchers often use it to test new anti-inflammatory drugs in the laboratory. Poligeenan is not approved as a food additive. When we eat carrageenan it will pass through the stomach and the stomach has acid. Anecdotal evidence suggests that eliminating carrageenan from the diet can provide relief from digestive problems, such as bloating and IBD. These reports are not the result of scientific research and animal studies have demonstrated seaweed may reduce IBS.

Research Reviews stating Carrageenan is Safe

The Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) have recommended a group allowable daily intake (ADI) of “not specified”. The lack of carcinogenic, genotoxic, or tumor-promoting activity with carrageenan strongly supports continuing such an ADI, and JECFA, during its most recent review in 2001, continued this recommendation.

WebMD came to the conclusion that carrageenan in likely safe for most people when taken by mouth in food amounts.

Fresh Pacific Sea Moss is eaten by locals in Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. Irish Sea moss has been eaten by the Irish for centuries.

We make no medical claims. But we all understand seaweed is healthy. What you may not know is that peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown in countless studies on humans, animals and in test tubes that seaweed is healthy. BioSea Health provides seaweed as a simple way to consume food. Simply good healthy food.

References

Monica Reginagel 2015. The Carrageenan controversy. Scientific American

Cohen, SM Ito, NA critical review of the toxicological effects of carrageenan and processed eucheuma seaweed on the gastrointestinal tract. Crit Rev Toxicol. 2002 Sep;32(5):413-44.DOI 10.1080/20024091064282 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12389870

Carrageenan: Uses, Side Effects, Interactions, Dosage, and Side Effects WebMD

Want  to check out more frequently asked questions about Pacific Seamoss and the product. Read some of the news articles or check out our FAQ page (https://bioseahealth.com/FAQ/)

We look at testing in ISO approved laboratories for nutrients in the Pacific SeaMoss. We keep the assay results from each batch. These values are general and may vary slightly between batches depending on the season, age of the seaweed, the water conditions and temperatures. There is no “standard” content of the nutrients in pacific seamoss.

The fibre content is generally about 28%. There is no information about the area that this seaweed was growing in. The heavy metals analysis from Pacific Sea Moss grown in the Samal area is lower than this from the Fiji area.

A 5-g portion of red seaweed 4.5% of the Reference Nutrient Intake for protein. On a gram-for-gram basis, seaweeds have protein and amino acid contents comparable to those of beef; however, seaweeds are consumed in much smaller quantities.

Trace Elements Nutrient Levels of Pacific Sea Moss

The analysis above for Kappaphycus alvarezii is very similar to the analysis from Eucheuma denticulatum. Therefore some nutrients such as aluminum, arsenic, boron, barium, calcium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, iron, mercury, potassion, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, nickel, lead, selenium, strontium, vanadium, and zinc are found in Pacific SeaMoss which can be consumed in dosages.

We make no medical claims. But we all understand seaweed is healthy. What you may not know is that peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown in countless studies on humans, animals and in test tubes that seaweed is healthy. BioSea Health provides seaweed as a simple way to consume food. Simply good healthy food.

References

The data above is an example analysis can be seen in supplementary tables from Wanyonyi et al (2017) Kappaphycus alvarezii as a Food Supplement Prevents 3 Diet-Induced Metabolic Syndrome in Rats. DOI:10.3390/nu9111261  Nutrients (9) 11

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=PMC5707733

Cherry et al 2019 Risks and benefits of consuming edible seaweeds. Nutrition Reviews 77 (5) 307-329 DOI:10.1093/nutrit/nuy066 https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/77/5/307/5370317

In the few trials that have been carried out on humans the amount of dry healthy seaweed consumed and the amount that has significant impacts on health is about 4 to 8 grams of dry seaweed per day. This equates to about 50 grams of fresh seaweed.

If you are familiar with Nori, which is the Japanese name for dried edible seaweed sheets made from a species of red algae called Porphyra, including Porphyra yezoensis and Porphyra tenera. It is probably most popularly known for its use in making Sushi, but it is used in many other applications too.

Here is two dessert plates of 50 grams Pacific Sea Moss. On the left is Kappaphycus alvarezii (cottonii) and on the left Eucheuma denticulatum. (spinosum). The amounts are similar to a lettuce type salad – this 50 gram dries down to about 5 grams of dry healthy seaweed.

We make no medical claims. But we all understand seaweed is healthy. What you may not know is that peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown in countless studies on humans, animals and in test tubes that seaweed is healthy. BioSea Health provides seaweed as a simple way to consume food. Simply good healthy food.

What is Pacific Sea Moss?

We use a variety of seaweeds (macroalgae) that grow in the subtropical waters. We currently only use Kappaphycus alvarezii  (often commonly called cottinii and previously called E. cottonii).

There are from 30,000 to 1 million of algae, but for macro-algae, there are at least some 13,000 species. Humans only use about 13 species commercially although there are dozens (>97)  species in the Philippines and there are species not yet identified.  Genetic profiling of seaweeds is only just beginning.
Taxonomists and seaweed researchers typically describe 3 types and include species from the Rhodophyta (red), Phaeophyta (brown) and Chlorophyta (green) families of macroalgae. This is very confusing, except for taxonomists.  E.g. The red seaweeds of Eucheumia and Kappaphycus were only separated into 2 separate genera in 1988.  They exist in a range of morphologies and colours depending on where it grows! Common names exist but these sometimes refer to different species. For example, Elk sea moss is a USA name, guso, kanot-kanot and Tambalang are all common names for K. alvarezii but in some locations the species is actually not that one.

Varieties of Pacific Sea Moss?

Red seaweeds

• Kappaphycus alvarezii – called cottonii in the Philippines / Indonesia / Malaysia and grown for its kappa-carrageenan content. Prior to 1985 the taxonomic name was Eucheuma cottonii. This is the primary species used in Pacific SeaMoss and also on the “BELFRIT”  list of accepted food seaweeds. The primary carrageenan produced is kappa-carrageenan sulfated polysaccharides.
• Eucheuma spinosum. The new proper species name is E. denticulatum but most literature still refers to it as E. spinosum or “spinosum”.  It has a wide range of  phentoypes – i.e. some cultivars look like different species, but are genetically probably the same. Called guso in Philippines and generally green in colour but can be brown, red or green in colour. The species is on the approved list in Europe. The list is the “BELFRIT”  list of accepted food seaweeds. (Shortened from Belgium, France and Italy). This species produces iota-carrageenan sulfated polysaccharides.
• Chondrus crispus is a red seaweed, also called Irish moss and is a common edible red seaweed that can be found on rocky shores in the Northern Atlantic. The cell wall contains carrageenan and C. crispus is the original source of this commercially used thickener.
• Halymenia (some 70 species)
• Gracilaria is used as a food in Japanese, Hawaiian, and Filipino cuisine. In Japanese cuisine, it is called ogonori or ogo. In the Philippines, it is called gulaman and used to make gelatin. In Jamaica, it is known as Irish moss. There are many species
• Dulse (Dulsepalmaria palmata) is a cool water red sea moss and gained media attention as “seaweed bacon”.
• Gigartina skottsbergii, Irdae or Mazzaella laminarioides species are wild harvested for carrageenan production in Chile (from Concepcion to Chiloe Island).
• Sarconema filiforme is a red seaweed found in Queensland, Australia, with iota-carrageenan and was used in an obesity experiment.

Green seaweeds

• Caulerpa lentillifera – sometimes called sea grapes or “Umibudo” in Japan and grown throughout the Pacific.
• Porphyra or Nori as known from Japan
• Aonori or green laver (Monostroma spp. and Enteromorpha spp.)
• Ulva sp or sea lettuce. Sea lettuce is eaten by a number of different sea animals, including manatees and the sea slugs known as sea hares. Many species of sea lettuce are a food source for humans in Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland, China, and Japan (where this food is known as aosa). Sea lettuce as a food for humans is eaten raw in salads and cooked in soups. It is high in protein, soluble dietary fiber, and a variety of vitamins and minerals, especially iron. The issue with sea lettuce is contamination with toxic heavy metals.

Brown seaweeds

• Sargassum has a number of species, and generally free-floating. Sargassum is not a prime edible but a plentiful one. It can be eaten by itself or added to fish and meat dishes. If not strong it can be added to salads after washing, or it can be cooked in water like a vegetable.
• Kombu or haidai.  Laminaria is a genus of 31 species of brown algae commonly called “kelp”. Some species are also referred to as tangle. This economically important genus is characterized by long, leathery laminae and relatively large size. Names include bull kelp, giant kelp, and Kombu or haidai in Japan.  It may be a range of species including L. longissima, L. japonica, L. angustata, L. coriacea and L. ochotensis.

We make no medical claims. But we all understand seaweed is healthy. What you may not know is that peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown in countless studies on humans, animals and in test tubes that seaweed is healthy. BioSea Health provides seaweed as a simple way to consume food. Simply good healthy food.

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