What Is Spirulina

Urban Foodies Look to Their Past and Find Recipes for Healthy Futures

Ola Akinmowo has built an oasis in her apartment in central Brooklyn, a neighborhood that food justice advocates have identified as a food desert.

I visited her for dinner one night last week and she made a vegan version of the Eba Egusi, a dish that consists of ground cassava (yucca) made into a mound, with a stew featuring ground melon seeds and red palm oil, both of which she purchased in the neighborhood African market. For breakfast, she makes a smoothie with fruits purchased from the farmer’s market in a nearby yuppie neighborhood, or frozen from Trader Joe’s. She puts in flax seed oil, oatmeal and spirulina from the health food store on Fulton Street, central Brooklyn’s main drag. Her 9-year-old daughter, who is not a fan of smoothies, eats roasted potatoes, some fresh fruit and perhaps some vegetables.

In her classroom, Akinmowo notes, one in seven children will have diabetes. She sees that many of them are overweight and get sick easily, and she blames the food system their families are trapped inside. “They’re not a part of the ‘choices’ they make,” she says of her young students. “Food is not a pleasure for them.”

Child obesity rates nationwide have tripled since the 1960s, while two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight. According to a New York City Department of Public Health study in 2007, the problem is most acute in low-income and immigrant neighborhoods like Akinmowo’s. In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick, for instance, obesity rates are higher when compared to New York City as a whole—26 percent of people aged 18 to 44 in Bed-Stuy and Bushwick were obese or overweight in that study, compared to 18 percent overall.

Studies also suggest that the longer immigrants stay in the U.S., the more they suffer from obesity and obesity-related illnesses.

Plant Protein And Spirulina

In years past, plant proteins haven't been considered the greatest sources of protein out there. Not only were they generally full of fiber, they were also largely incomplete proteins. But that was the past. Nowadays, with the mass harvesting of things like Spirulina, which is actually a richer source of protein than even animal protein sources, plant protein powder formulas are getting a second chance. Especially with the vegetarian and vegan movements growing so large in recent years, there's much demand for good sources of protein that are complete proteins and haven't come from animal sources. The past few decades have been all about whey protein. It has been the dominant protein powder for almost anyone wanting to supplement more protein into their diets. But in the near future, I think we're going to find that other protein powders, primarily plant protein powders, are going to take the stage.

Plant proteins have historically had one huge problem, the fact that they haven't historically been complete proteins. What does that mean anyway, and incomplete protein? Basically, for a protein to be condidered complete, it needs to contain all of the amino acids that the human body needs. All in all, there are 22 amino acids used by the body, and most animal sources of protein contain all 22. Of the 22 amino acids, 8 are called essential amino acids because the body can't produce them on its own. The other 14 the body can synthesize on its own. So those 8 are especially important. This is the main reason why plant proteins have had a rough start, because a lot of them are not complete protein sources. They don't have all of the amino acids the human body needs. This is why a large push has happened in recent years toward finding more rich and complete sources of plant protein. There are several popular brands these days that have come out with plant protein powder formulas loaded with complete proteins.

One such powder, which isn't generally marketed as a protein powder, is Spirulina. Spirulina algae is not only a complete protein, in fact, it has been shown to have more protein than any meat source out there. That's pretty incredible. Because of this discovery, Spirulina algae has begun to be produced in many places and is widely available. Though a stigma still exists for the time being against many plant protein powders, acceptance is growing because of all of the other amazing nutritional value they often offer.

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