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Agar—for Weight Loss and Tasty Desserts
The healthful seaweed agar is used as a gelatin to enhance the flavors of other foods; it has remarkable medicinal properties. If taken as a supplement, it aids weight-reduction as agar’s indigestible fiber absorbs and retains water resulting in a feeling of fullness. This remarkable fiber also soothes the digestive tract and so is medicinal for IBS, Crohn’s disease, colitis and other inflammatory conditions. As with all seaweeds, agar is acclaimed for it’s ability to dispel from the body toxic and radioactive pollutants. Agar is an excellent invalid and infant food as it is light, nourishing and easy to digest.
One ounce of agar contains 86 calories. Two tablespoons of powdered agar provide two percent of the daily need of folate, magnesium and manganese. As a kitchen remedy to soothe inflamed bronchia or for a non-productive cough, make the accompanying “Jell-O” recipe with only the fruit and juice of apples and/or pears.
You may remember agar from school days as the growth medium found in petri dishes. White and semi-translucent, it is processed from several varieties of red marine algae known as agarophytes (agar-yielding). These algae grow as deep as 200 feet in stunning purplish-red fronds. Their color pigments enable them to absorb what little light penetrates their deeply dark wet and mineral-dense environment.
Use agar to gel fruit deserts and aspics as well as to thicken soups and jellies. Or simply stir in a ½ teaspoonful of powdered agar into a glass of fruit or vegetable juice. As it requires heat to gel, adding it to a cold beverage will go unnoticed (no need to tell the kids they’re eating seaweed) and it will slow down the absorption of simple sugars thus helping regulate blood sugar as well as boosting nutrition and flavor. Plus, the juice will now be more filling.
Caution If you use dry agar powder, granules or capsules as a weight reduction aid, stir into (or swallow) with adequate fluid. Should agar become stuck in your throat or esophagus, it can swell rapidly and may cause choking. Do not take as a dry supplement if you have trouble swallowing.
What flavor does agar enhance? How does one use agar as a food enhancer?
Agar imparts umani or a savory flavor; but is tasteless itself. I most often use it to gel fruit juices.
Can you place agar agar flakes in warm water overnight, pour off the water the next morning, the flakes are still visible and in a gelatin like substance. and use. or do the flakes have to be completely disolved into a gelatin state .
I’ve always cooked them. I’m not sure what you’re aiming to accomplish: an uncooked dish or a gelatin?
Hi Rebecca,
How does the agar slow down sugar digestion if most of the fiber in it is indigestible?
The same way that the fiber in a carrot slows down the digestion of the carbohydrate in the carrot. For an experiential sense of this, note how carrot juice can give you a “sugar rush” whereas a carrot does not.
Hi Rebecca, the agar that I can buy comes in a bar shape of dried weed. I have not been able to use it successfully as I can’t fina a conversion for agar powder or Karen flakes to the raw dried bars! I would love your help with this. Thanks
Eden Foods has the conversion in their Apple Kanten recipe. And if you enter their site via my page, you receive a 15% discount on any order!
Greetings Rebecca! I used to live in Crestone, now Sonoma County, CA. I’m wondering if you have info to share about radiation in seaweed. I use a lot of kombu & it’s time to replenish my supply, but I haven’t bought any since before the nuclear problems in Japan last spring. Do you have recommendations for sources? Also, I’m tempted to take a seaweed harvesting class next month, since I now live near the coast, though have concerns about radioactive content, even though my need to eat seaweed (for radiation ) is even greater.
Thank you for all of your great works!
Hi Beth,
Fortunately Eden Foods thoroughly tests their products for contamination and publish their reports. Regrets I don’t know the current status of California seaweed–ask the folks sponsoring the class and perhaps plan on going either way. There’s little that’s more ecstatic than harvesting seaweed.