Seaweed – Rediscovering a sustainable and forgotten food
Dr Craig Rose PhD – aka Doctor Seaweed – explains why we should say yes to more seaweed, with this long-forgotten, natural marine resource able to benefit many aspects of consumers’ lives.
Seaweed is a massively underutilised marine resource that offers huge scope as a sustainable industry for coastal communities – developing and delivering products that meet multiple market demands.
As a marine biologist, I have been working commercially with seaweed for nearly 20 years and spanning biofuels, food and nutrition. My key focus since 2015 has been on developing products based around a sustainable seaweed supply that delivers clear nutritional benefits to consumers, and in appealing ways that they can easily engage with. This market driven approach is, for me, key in seeing this nascent industry in the West able to grow and become a serious mainstream proposition.
Overcoming market frailty
There are various exciting projects around seaweed cultivation, which should attract public and private sector funding, but which are potentially without sufficient and clear markets into which to sell the resultant biomass at a commercially viable price. This puts their success at risk of being grand ideas that don’t deliver against the investments made. For these reasons, my company Seaweed & Co has developed a range of PureSea® seaweed ingredients for use in food and nutrition products, and a Doctor Seaweed® range of nutritional supplements.
The PureSea range – wild harvested and produced in the pristine Scottish Outer Hebrides – has been used in numerous nutrition and supplement products, as well as in foods by the likes of PepsiCo, M&S, Sainsbury’s and many more. The core benefits are providing flavour enhancement, and as a natural source of the essential nutrient iodine. In the UK, between 66-84% of women are deficient in iodine, and 70% of people across Europe. Furthermore, seaweed has a proven “health halo” effect, where consumers have a positive health perception of products containing it – so long as it delivers on flavour if in food products.
The species used in the proprietary PureSea process is Ascophyllum nodosum, which offers a highly scalable supply into the thousands of tonnes per year.
Adaptive to shifting demand
I launched the Doctor Seaweed brand of nutritional supplements to partly meet this market demand. It also doesn’t rely on a culinary approach which consumers are still hesitant about. The Doctor Seaweed range is all based around the PureSea ingredient, plus other natural and plant-based nutrients to provide benefits including thyroid health, menopause support, immunity, focus and brain health, beauty-from-within, and energy and metabolism. Illustrating the growing mainstream appeal, the brand is stocked in Boots, Holland & Barrett, on QVC (UK and Italy), Amazon, and on its own website.
I’ve found this brand-driven approach means a quicker pivot into new market opportunities as they arise, and utilising the same seaweed ingredients, as well as taking on new ones as they come through. For example, seaweed snacks are relatively small in the UK, but growing rapidly, and it is one of the fastest growing sectors of snacking in the USA.
Doctor Seaweed as a brand can quickly adapt to launch the PureSea seaweed into their own brand/co-branded products and which will further consumer awareness and uptake of a highly nutritious and sustainable food. Other market wins are around fish and plant-based fish, where PureSea seaweed offers complementary flavours, a logical link back to the sea, and essential nutrition from the sea – iodine is sourced only from fish, dairy and seaweed. PureSea is ideal for use in coatings, pre-dusts, butters and sauces that can go alongside fish products.
Essentially, seaweed is something that most cultures around the world have used as it’s so incredibly sustainable and highly nutritious. We are now rediscovering this in the West, which gives genuine, positive hope for a sustainable and prosperous future.
About Dr Craig Rose
Dr Craig Rose PhD is a marine biologist, leading seaweed expert and founder of Pure Sea. He’s passionate about finding ways to bring this resource to people in ways they can really engage with and benefit from.
