Besides eating wakame in the classic Japanese dish miso soup, many people in the world don’t know much about the seaweed. Wakame is actually a very healthy food that has many health benefits for the body.
The alkaline seaweed only have about 4 calories per 10 grams of raw seaweed. That small calorie amount is due to wakame’s low levels of carbohydrates and fat. Wakame is also rich and essential minerals. The USDA National Nutrient Database gives a complete nutritional profile of wakame, which includes manganese, sodium, magnesium, calcium and 5 percent of the recommended intake of folate in just a 2 tablespoon serving.
Wakame can also help people control their weight. In a study, scientists in Japan have shown that wakame has a compound, fucoxanthin, that stops the accumulation of bad fat in animal tests. Fucoxanthin is the substance that gives wakame its colorful appearance and aids in photosynthesis. This compound activates fat oxidation and stimulate the liver to produce omega-3 DHA, which helps to fight bad cholesterol linked to heart disease and obesity.
The sea vegetable also helps to prevent cancer. An article in “Breast Cancer Research” reported that the greenish seaweed is also rich in iodine, which several study on breast cancer showed to kill mammary tumors.
