It's a Shore Thing

You may be inclined to wrinkle your nose at the mention of seaweed. Pungent and slimy, it's usually something to avoid at the beach, not your first choice for something to drink, eat or wear. But that unflattering — and undeserved — image is now changing. As a natural resource with unique, health-boosting properties, seaweed is showing up in an increasing variety of products as companies find new ways to market the renewable marine resource.

At its ultramodern factory in Brest, France, the laboratory company Science et Mer recently launched its own line of seaweed-based skin creams based on purported anti-aging agents in a certain blue micro-alga. Currently, some 100 firms in Brittany now base their business on seaweed, harvesting more than 100,000 tons a year. While seaweed is a dietary staple in Asia, algae-based products in Europe have previously gone undercover as additives to ice cream, desserts, toothpaste, even diapers. Yet its health benefits (it's rich in proteins and vitamins) and natural abundance (Brittany alone counts at least 500 varieties) mean that seaweed is now seen as a highly promising — even cool — ingredient.

Germany's SeaCell has developed a soft, skin-friendly fiber out of cellulose and seaweed, touted for its anti-itch and anti-allergy properties; French sockmaker Rywan has incorporated it in a line of sports socks. At the Tonnerre de Brest microbrewery, Erwan Jestin uses seaweed's natural filtration mechanism to make a tasty beer with 12 different algae. It's even creeping onto European dinner plates, says Patrick Plan. His Brittany-based company, Marinoë, markets a range of seaweed edibles, from red dulse, a sweet-tasting seaweed that grows on rocks, to wakame pasta, made from a mild-flavored kelp. Plan enthuses, "it's a food with a future." And you thought it was just slime.