As Fisheries Deplete, Sea Veggies Offer Sustainable Nutrients to Our Diets

Depending on which studies you read, it appears that we will run out of fish, at least the plentiful bounty of diverse fish we’re getting all-to-accustomed to eating regularly.  According to the book and upcoming documentary called The End of the Line, most of the fish we’re used to seeing:  tuna, halibut, snapper, and the like, will effectively be gone from the world’s oceans by 2050.  What that means in terms of harvest remains to be seen.  It is more than likely that we’ll stop seeing our nutrient load coming from the sea.  This will put additional pressure on our already unsustainable land-based agricultural systems.

An interesting side-note is that the sea provides nutrients that are not easy to come by in land-based agriculture, meaning that our diets will likely become less diverse and nutrient rich.  However, sea vegetables can provide terrific benefits of bringing the bounty of the sea into our kitchen.  Sea vegetables are lower on the food chain than fish, and therefore more eco-friendly to harvest (as a general principle).

Health benefits of sea veggies include cardiovascular, healthy thyroid function, relief of menopause symptoms, reductions of the occurrences of birth defects, inflammatory response, and positive psychological health effects, such as easily absorbable magnesium, which has a stress-reduction effect. One very easy way to work some sea veggies into your diet is to add arame to your broth when you make a soup like miso soup.

Scott Cooney is the author of Build a Green Small Business:  Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill).

Twitter:  ScottCooney