Eat Wakame and Lose Weight

First of all, what’s wakame? It’s a brown seaweed (Undaria pinnatifida) collected off the coasts of Japan, and is used as an ingredient in miso soup or in suno mono salads.

Recent studies show that this seaweed is not only a good souce of iodine which can help prevent goiter, it is also high in fucoxanthin, a pigment compound that seems to help fight obesity by stimulating a protein called UCP1, which in turn causes fat oxidation and conversion of energy to heat. Additionally, fucoxanthin also appear to stimulate the liver to produce DHA, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, which subsequently reduce ‘bad cholesterol’ (low density lipoprotein) which contribute to obesity and heart disease.

[As seen in The Biotech Weblog]