The
granting of England's first licence to sell seaweed is most welcome. This
delicious substance is highly nutritious
guardian.co.uk,
Oliver Thring, Tuesday 20 November 2012
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| 'Laverbread, arguably Wales’s greatest delicacy, is a superb savoury foil to bacon and buttered toast.' Photograph: Alamy |
A man named
Rory MacPhee has just been granted England's first licence to gather and sell
"sea vegetables", which include seaweed. It may come as a shock to
some of the hundreds of amateur foragers living and working on the British
coast that if they sell the seaweed they harvest, they're breaking the law.
Time was when many people living in these islands ate seaweed every day.
Seaweed, in
fact, is one of the most useful natural substances on the planet. It's existed
for over one billion years, and all land plants evolved from it. At least 145
of its roughly 10,000 different species are eaten around the world. It's full
of carbohydrates, proteins, minerals and vitamins, and it's often rich in
iodine. Dulse, which MacPhee plans to harvest in particular, contains every
trace element that human beings need.
In eastern
China, seaweed is a major vegetable – though the "seaweed" you buy in
your local takeaway is likely to be deep-fried cabbage. In Ireland they mash
seaweed into porridge; in Hawaii they harvest and rinse it and eat it with
fish. Iceland teems with free-growing ingredients: edible seaweeds were one of
the few things that people could eat there in previous bleaker centuries.
Laverbread is arguably Wales's greatest delicacy, a superb savoury foil to
bacon and buttered toast made with the seaweed laver.
Though
Indonesia produces more, Japan is probably the world's most important consumer
of seaweed. They eat at least 21 species there. Nori is the flaky, crackly
stuff that sticks to your tongue when you bite a sushi roll. Its annual trade
is worth more than $1bn, making it the most valuable aquaculture in Japan,
worth more than fish and seafood.
Another
Japanese seaweed, kombu, is difficult for humans to digest, but it has
nonetheless proved to be one of the most transformative ingredients of all
time. In the early 20th century a Japanese chemist found that kombu was an
especially rich source of monosodium glutamate – in fact, when you dry kombu,
it forms little white crystals of monosodium glutamate (MSG) on its surface.
MSG, of course, is now manufactured by the tonne and used across the global
food industry. People say vaguely but correctly that it makes foods "taste
more of themselves": it enhances the inherent savouriness of a dish,
rather than seasoning it with a bitter, salty, sweet or sour note. The Japanese
word for this flavour, umami, translates roughly as "delicious". It's
worth noting that, contrary to its reputation, MSG is one of the safest and
best-studied additives used in food. Those who claim that the MSG in Chinese
takeaways makes them feel sick are more likely suffering the effects of a
surfeit of cheap grease.
Processing
certain red seaweeds gets you carrageenan, aka E407 – another of the most
important additives in all industry. They stick it in toothpaste, shampoo,
aerosol foams, shoe polish and pharmaceuticals. It winds up in ice creams,
beer, pet food, soy milk and diet fizzy drinks. Carrageenan is a stabiliser and
thickener. It's the only substance known to attack the cold virus directly. But
while people have used it for centuries to thicken sauces, not least in Ireland
and Scotland, it's probably not a good idea to eat too much of those processed
foods that contain a lot of it. It certainly causes inflammation in rats, and
studies on mice and guinea pigs have suggested a link between carrageenan and
colon cancer.
Nonetheless,
old-fashioned seaweeds are nutritious and delicious, and it's rather a shame
that we abandoned them in this country. If MacPhee manages to get more Britons
eating the stuff, he should be applauded.
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