Wakame seaweed benefit

Wakame is the best-known type of edible brown algae or kelp that is routinely consumed by humans, particularly those living in Asian countries. Wakame is native to Korea, China, and Japan. Currently, however, it can also be found in other parts of the world, including Great Britain. Fucoxanthin containing wakame can be found in a variety of dishes in Asian countries.

Wakame as food
Wakame is a thin and stringy seaweed, deep green in color and used in making seaweed salad and miso soup.
While nori, the seaweed used for rolling sushi, is usually sold dried, wakame can be found either dried or fresh, in a refrigerated, and sealed package. Wakame is used in salads, added to soup or broth or used as a topping for other dishes. Soak dried wakame in water and it will expand to several times in size.

Wakame nutritional content
Wakame has several ingredients including iodine, salt, fatty acids such as stearidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid, and a carotenoid called fucoxanthin. The iodine content can range from 0.5 mg to 3 grams per gram or wakame.

Fucoxanthin absorption and bioavailability from wakame is low
Unlike other carotenoids, the absorption or availability of fucoxanthin, when ingested from wakame source, is quite low.

Low bioavailability of dietary epoxyxanthophylls in humans.
Br J Nutr. 2008. Asai A, Yonekura L, Nagao A. National Food Research Institute, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Epoxyxanthophylls (epoxide-containing xanthophylls), a group of carotenoids, are ubiquitously distributed in edible plants. Among them, neoxanthin in green leafy vegetables and fucoxanthin in brown algae such as wakame. To estimate the intestinal absorption of neoxanthin and fucoxanthin in humans, we evaluated the plasma epoxyxanthophyll concentrations before and after 1-week dietary interventions with spinach (Spinacia oleracea) and wakame (Undaria pinnatifida). Even after 1 week of spinach intake (3.0 mg neoxanthin per day), the plasma concentrations of neoxanthin and its metabolites (neochrome stereoisomers) remained very low, whereas those of beta-carotene and lutein were markedly increased. Similarly, the plasma concentration of fucoxanthinol, a gastrointestinal metabolite of fucoxanthin, was very low after 1 week of wakame intake (6.1 mg fucoxanthin per day).

Brown algae include Laminaria sp., Undaria pinnatifida, and Hizikia fusiforme. Fucus is a genus of brown seaweed found on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America. Fucus Nodosus may be a synonym for Ascophyllum nodosum (Linnaeus) Le Jolis.
Red algae (Porphyra sp.) originate from China, Japan, and Korea.

Characterization of edible seaweed harvested on the galician coast (northwestern Spain) using pattern recognition techniques and major and trace element data.
J Agric Food Chem. 2010; Romarís-Hortas V, García-Sartal C, Moreda-Piñeiro A, Bermejo-Barrera P. Department of Analytical Chemistry, Nutrition and Bromatology, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Santiago de Compostela, Avenida das Ciencias s/n, Spain.
Major and trace elements in North Atlantic seaweed originating from Galicia (northwestern Spain) were determined by using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) (Ba, Ca, Cu, K, Mg, Mn, Na, Sr, and Zn), inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) (Br and I) and hydride generation-atomic fluorescence spectrometry (HG-AFS) (As). Pattern recognition techniques were then used to classify the edible seaweed according to their type (red, brown, and green seaweed) and also their variety (Wakame, Fucus, Sea Spaghetti, Kombu, Dulse, Nori, and Sea Lettuce). Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) were used as exploratory techniques, and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) were used as classification procedures. In total, t12 elements were determined in a range of 35 edible seaweed samples (20 brown seaweed, 10 red seaweed, 4 green seaweed, and 1 canned seaweed). Natural groupings of the samples (brown, red, and green types) were observed using PCA and CA (squared Euclidean distance between objects and Ward method as clustering procedure). The application of LDA gave correct assignation percentages of 100% for brown, red, and green types at a significance level of 5%. However, a satisfactory classification (recognition and prediction) using SIMCA was obtained only for red seaweed (100% of cases correctly classified), whereas percentages of 89 and 80% were obtained for brown seaweed for recognition (training set) and prediction (testing set), respectively.