Sea plants are amazing food and Medicine! I am here to convince you that Seaweed is Sexy!
Having returned last month from the Northern California Women's Herbal Symposium (www.womensherbalsymposium.org) I am devoting the next few blog entries to the Amazingly Nutritive, Sustainable, Essential Incorporation of Sea Vegetables into our daily diet for Maximum Health and Wellness. (I hope from my exaggerated use of Capitalization, you are getting how Passionate I am about this!)
I had the opportunity to meet with two amazing sisters from the Wild DevoOcean Seaweed Collective: (www.wilddevoceanseaweed.com), up in Northern California - a collective  Devoted to sustainable harvesting of this most precious commodity! These ladies are rockstars - to hear the stories about how they venture forth - a few days out of the year - to sustainably harvest seaweed - talk about Xtreme Sport! They are preserving the integrity of the plants and providing us with a food that is insanely high in essential trace minerals, protein, iron, and more!
So as background let's start with this: Hijiki, arame & wakame each contain  more than 10 times! the calcium of milk, sea lettuce contains 25 times the iron of beef, and depending on when they are harvested, kelp, kombu, and arame contain 100-500 times the iodine of shellfish and 600-3000 times the iodine average of other marine fish! Whoah! Also Seaweeds are also one of the few sources of fluorine, which boosts the body's immune system and strengthens teeth and bones (better than that artificial fluoridated water some of you are buying for your kids - augh!). Sea plants contain 10-20 times the minerals of land plants  as well as crazy amounts of vitamines and other elements for your metablism and wellbeing.
If this isn't enough to convince you - sewweeds have the amazing ability to detoxify the body - the "shlime" produced when you rehydrate dried seaweed (simply by soaking in water for 20 minutes) will bind with the heavy metals  and radioactive elements in the body and convert them to harmless salts, which you will pee/poo out. Easy!
In Chinese medicine, the ancient texts state, "there is no swelling that is not relieved by seaweed." So sea plants are used to reat swellings, nodules, lumps, goiter, swollen lymph glands, edema, all skin diseases marked with redness, tumors, chronic cough with heat signs (yellow/green phlegm). Sea weed is very useful for fibroid tumors and cancer.
Seaweeds are useful for weightloss programs and for lowering cholesterol and fat in the blood. The mucilaginous gels (algin, carrageenan, and agar) specifically rejuvenate the lungs and gastrointestinal tract.
Convinced yet?
Those of you trying to get pregnant? The same "shlime" that is produced when you soak the seaweed - makes an excellent lubricant which seems to be an amazing facilitator to the conception process - I told you Seaweed was Sexy! So incorporate seaweed into your (hmmm....) baby-making activities!
You can bathe in seaweed- really fun in the tub, or eat it.
Ideally, you will use sea plants regularly in meals. Because they are so potent - 1/6-1/2 oz (5-15 grams) of dried seaweed (before soaking or cooking) daily is great. You can also supplement with some kelp tablets.
So the next question is - Where do I get it? How do I make it?
Check out the www.wilddevoceanseaweed.com website (For bathing - I love the turkish towel as a reusable facial/body exfoliator - I imagine myself a mermaid as I bathe among the kombu/kelp - my girls love it too!) or your local wholefoods/health store.
Now for some recipes - google to your heart's delight for wait breathless in anticipation for my next blog entry!