With the launch today of the UK’s National Food Strategy, Dr Craig Rose (aka Doctor Seaweed) was featured on Sky News to comment on the role seaweed plays in answering the needs of this highly anticipated food strategy.
The report, led by businessman Henry Dimbleby, outlines how raising taxes could extend the provision of free school meals and assist better diets amongst poorer communities. There is emphasis on plant-based food alternatives with environmental pressure to reduce methane emissions in industrial cattle farming. Dimbleby states the report and possible taxes are part of a plan to create a food system that is good for us and good for the planet.[1] The strategy is supported by many health charities, chefs and food industry leaders. Jamie Oliver, a proponent in the past for seaweed as a source of nutrition, praises the report as an “opportunity to create a much fairer and more sustainable food system for all families.”[2]
Within the Sky News feature, Doctor Seaweed discusses how the ongoing use of seaweed as an ingredient to boost flavour and enhance essential nutrition is an existing and sizeable market, and that offers the opportunity to be rapidly scaled sustainably. The report urges the government to invest £50m into the development of sustainable food alternatives, particularly proteins through lab-grown meats and plant-based foods. This heightens the pressure to reduce our meat consumption on a national scale without removing any essential nutrients or trace elements.
It is important to note that alternative proteins are only part of the picture, and ensuring adequate broader nutrition is also essential. PureSea® seaweed (LINK) bridges the nutritional gap between fish and dairy to plant-based alternatives by offering a rich plant-based source of essential iodine. This nutrient iodine is lacking in the majority of all UK diets, and can be especially deficient in vegan diets. Salt and sugar taxes are also considered within the review; proposing that the money raised should be spent on giving free school meals to 1.1 million children as well as supporting healthier diets for those in more deprived communities.[3] PureSea® seaweed offers solutions here also, with the umami flavour enhancing properties offering potential for salt reduction, as well as the wider nutritional boosts allowing for EU Approved Health Claims.
Another facet of the report is the increasing commercial pressure for companies to reduce their carbon footprint through new technologies and regenerative farming practises. The report itself highlights how seaweed could play a role in reducing carbon emissions caused by industrial farming by augmenting cattle feed with seaweed to diminish methane levels. Although still in the early stages of development, lab trials in Australia using a 2% seaweed additive to cattle feed have found that methane emissions were reduced by 99%.[4] With this gas being the single largest source of emissions in our food system, such testing proves hopeful but government investment into further research and technological innovation is being encouraged.
The sustainable wild harvesting of our organic PureSea® seaweed from the pristine waters of the Scottish Outer Hebrides offers quality assurance that ensures the retention of key aspects of nutrition with each batch being DNA Authenticated. The formats of PureSea® make it easy for any food or nutrition product to incorporate the benefits of seaweed and address some of the challenges that lay ahead.
Discover more about PureSea® by exploring the full range of products today. Simply click here to find out more.