Europeans now rarely eat seaweed, but it was an important part of their diet until the late Middle Ages, archeologists said on Tuesday, calling for the eco-friendly aquatic plant to be put back on the menu.
Seaweed, a healthy and sustainable source of protein, is a staple food in some Asian countries such as Japan, but it has long been shunned by traditional Western diets — with a few exceptions, such as the Welsh dish laverbread.
It was previously thought that since the rise of farming, Europeans had mostly used seaweed as fuel, fertilizer or to feed livestock. It was only eaten to stave off hunger during famine, so the thinking went.
Photo: AFP
However, a study published in the journal Nature Communications found that Europeans were gobbling up seaweed millennia after that point, and said that the continent should re-embrace the nutritious food.
To find out about ancient seaweed consumption, a UK-led team of researchers analyzed dental plaque extracted from the teeth of 74 different people who lived thousands of years ago at 28 sites ranging from Scotland to Spain.
Using a mass spectrometry technique to identify organic compounds, they found evidence that the teeth had munched on several different aquatic plants.
Red seaweed was eaten in Scotland’s northern Orkney islands about 5,000 years ago and at Casa Corona in southern Spain 8,000 years ago, the study found.
Freshwater aquatic plants, such as the pondweed Potamogeton, were commonly eaten in Portugal, Scotland and Lithuania, it said.
Karen Hardy, a professor of prehistoric archeology at Scotland’s University of Glasgow and the study’s lead author, said that aquatic plants were “very likely eaten over a much more wide timescale than we found.”
Europeans were previously believed to have turned their noses up at seaweed following the introduction of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago.
However, research in this field has focused on agricultural production, so is might have missed out on seaweed, which is easy to find and eat.
The authors of the study said seaweed has the potential to be a locally sourced, low-emission option that does not require the mass farming of the meals normally seen on Europe’s plates.
“It’s very healthy, it’s nutritious, it’s available, it’s renewable,” Hardy said, adding that people hopefully might eat it again.
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