Eating Sunshine, Creating Energy & Nutrients
A quick flashback to 4th grade science class: photosynthesis is the ability to transform sun-light, water and carbon dioxide into energy. Every living plant does it, whether at sea or on land. The energy produced is what allows plants to survive. Land-based vegetation uses the energy to grow branches, leaves, roots and flowers.
Single-celled algae, on the other hand, don’t actually grow in size – they multiply. The individual cells of these plants divide again and again and again, continuously making more of them-selves. As for algae’s energy? It’s put toward creating nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids including EPA, DHA, beta-carotene, chlorophyll and astaxanthin.
That’s right, as Dr. Michael Klaper, a physician at TrueNorth Clinic, explains in Ali Tabrizi’s “Seaspiracy” documentary, it is algae – not fish – that are nature’s true source of omega-3s. Algae create them, krill and other fish then swallow the algae, and this critical nutrient moves its way up the food chain. Algae wind up in the fatty tissue of larger fish, which are then caught and ingested by humans.
Factor in the varying combinations of dioxins, PCBs, heavy metals and plastic compounds found in today’s fish populations and the question becomes clear: why not skip the toxins in our bodies and the harm to our oceans by sourcing omegas from where they originally come: our algae friends?