Kelp Noodles

[CatTreats]

Has anyone tried them? My store carries 100% raw kelp noodles with just a sodium extract from brown seaweed. They are supposed to be just like eating kelp, so they'd have a lot of trace minerals and iodine. I thought it might be a fun way to eat more sea veggies, but wanted to get some opinions.

[Alive]

I remember seaweeds are not 'legal' in the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, suggesting that they may not be good for people with microbe overgrowth.

[CatTreats]

I remember seaweeds are not 'legal' in the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, suggesting that they may not be good for people with microbe overgrowth.

But for healthy adults eating RPD, they're fine? I can't imagine seaweed/kelp being unhealthy. u_u

[Alive]

Looking at the Specific Carbohydrate Diet again I see that it forbids many plant foods because they contain starches, which could feed unhelpful bacteria, and the reason must be because they are cooked which makes the starch too easily digestible and available to unhelpful bacteria in the small intestine.

Thanks to PaleoPhil and FreeTheAnimal etc we are now aware that many uncooked starches are very healthy as they are difficult to digest and make it through the small intestine to feed beneficial bacteria in the large intestine.

This is probably the same for raw seaweed.

Therefore I wish to retract my previous statement about raw seaweed being bad for people with bowel problems.

If the kelp noodles are raw please try them and let us know how you get on

[eveheart]

Ages ago, I tried a kelp "noodle" called Sea Tangle. From my paleo point of view, (#1) kelp noodles look nothing like kelp and (#2) yes, sodium alginate is a gum extracted from the cell walls of algae, so it sounds natural, but extraction can mean many things, not all of them natural! We're not talking about a product that you could make in your kitchen if you were given a pile of the right kind of algae.

I avoid processed foods whose processing is a mystery to me. I mean, look at carrageenan: it used to be in everything, and it's still controversial for it's intestinal side effects.

If you ate algae, you'd be ingesting miniscule quantities of the unextracted gum that they make sodium alginate from. However, with a processed food containing the extracted gum, the amount of sodium alginate is much higher than you'd get if you ate the natural food. Who knows if that is good for you or not?

[CatTreats]

If the kelp noodles are raw please try them and let us know how you get on

They had minimal flavor, but what flavor they had was like a fresh taste. Can't really explain. They had an unusual crunch to them, it threw me off a bit. They were definitely fun to eat. I had them in raw coconut aminos (raw, fermented coconut nectar that tastes like soy sauce), and I only ate about half of my bowl so they sat in the sauce for another couple of hours. After I went to eat them again, they had softened up and lost that crunch. So then they were more like traditional Asian noodles, which I enjoyed. So next time I might prep them in advance.

Ages ago, I tried a kelp "noodle" called Sea Tangle. From my paleo point of view, (#1) kelp noodles look nothing like kelp and (#2) yes, sodium alginate is a gum extracted from the cell walls of algae, so it sounds natural, but extraction can mean many things, not all of them natural! We're not talking about a product that you could make in your kitchen if you were given a pile of the right kind of algae.

That's true, but it's a lot better than some other odd preservative that probably started completely unnatural.

If you ate algae, you'd be ingesting miniscule quantities of the unextracted gum that they make sodium alginate from. However, with a processed food containing the extracted gum, the amount of sodium alginate is much higher than you'd get if you ate the natural food. Who knows if that is good for you or not?

Good points. I do think that for eating it once in a while, it could be a lot worse. I can't imagine it's significantly more unnatural than say, coconut oil. If I was handed a coconut, I would not be able to turn it into coconut oil.