What is the most widespread nutritional disorder in the world?
Iron deficiency.
Can you believe it?!?!? According to the World Health Organisation, 20% of maternal deaths are caused by iron deficiency or anaemia, and it affects people in both developing and developed countries. Anaemia is a global epidemic that leads to underestimated impacts on health and productivity of individuals through lost vitality. You might be feeling tired, unmotivated and finding it hard to focus as a result of low iron levels, but it is also a cause of poor development in children's learning and growth. Reducing anaemia in reproductive women by 50% is the second of 6 of the World Health Organisation's global targets for human health by 2025.
These are shocking and poorly understood statistics, yet there are simple solutions through food. For some reason however, seaweed has been forgotten as a simple and effective (bio-available) source of iron. If iron is hard to come by in your diet, especially if you are turning to a more sustainable plant rich diet, including some of the right kinds of seaweed in your diet everyday can help to address anaemia.
A simple clinical study in India demonstrated that chocolate fortified with the right kind of seaweed that includes highly bio-available iron and safe amounts of iodine, reduced anaemia over 6 weeks in a cohort of teenage girls. Both the green seaweed and dark chocolate are good sources of iron, but each on their own in a raw form are less appealing. The traditional blending and formulation of chocolate food or beverages has a history of 1000s of years.
In addition to bio-available iron, our seaweed includes B vitamins such as B12 which are also important in preventing anaemia and are not readily available in land plants. Further, copper is an essential nutrient that helps in the absorption of iron, and 10g of any of our PhycoTein ingredients will deliver up to 40% of your recommended daily intake of copper. This is why we developed PhycoMuesli with PhycoTein pellets that are rich in protein with iron, B12 and other trace elements. A bit of seaweed every day over a couple months is can help to recover iron levels back to normal.
