Where to buy spirulina and other sea vegetables on the internet
Buy spirulina from internet natural food stores where you can buy sea greens products directly online. The USA-based stores have a wider selection. They all ship internationally and often have special offers.
A tip: if you use the following websites' search box, enter specific sea greens, like kelp, agar agar, spirulina, chlorella, Irish moss, or terms like algae.
USA-BASED - SHIP INTERNATIONALLY
- Kalyx
has one of the best selections of spirulina products. When you click on the link provided here you'll be presented with a list of sea vegetables in alphabetical order. Scroll down to spirulina and you'll find many spirulina products: Spirulina Natural Powder, Certified Organic Spirulina Powder, and others. If you type "spirulina" in that same web page's search box, you'll get an even ampler choice of spirulina products. Again, scroll down the search results to the letter "s" for spirulina, where you'll find lots of stuff, including Spirulina Tablets, Spirulina Vegicaps, Spirulina Extract, Spirulina Caplets, Spirulina Capsules and others. The Kalyx website also has a very large choice of other sea vegetables and algae products.
- Vitamin Shoppe
has a very ample choice of spirulina products, including Spirulina Powder, Spirulina Tablets, Spirulina Capsules (see top right picture), Spirulina Softgels, and others. It also has more original products such as Spirulina Cashew bars, Nut Butter Spirulina Ginseng Balls bars, Spiru-Soy Chocolate Powder, Spiru-Tein Strawberry (or Chocolate or Vanilla or Banana) Wafers, and a web-only special: Spiru-Tein Powder with different flavours, like chocolate, cappuccino, vanilla, strawberry, cookies & cream, wafers chocolate, cherries, banana, peaches, bluberry, tropical fruit, nutty berry, and many more. There also a few products just for kids. The website also has a good selection of many other sea greens and algae products: to find them type "algae" or the name of the seaweed you are looking for (e.g. kelp, chlorella, dulse, agar agar, Irish moss etc.) in its search box.
- eVitamins
has a good choice of spirulina products, including spirulina powder, spirulina tablets, spirulina caplets, spirulina capsules, spirulina blends. It also has many more algae and seaweed products.
UK-BASED - SHIP INTERNATIONALLY
- Holland & Barrett
has certified organic spirulina, spirulina powder, spirulina tablets, spirulina capsules, sea kelp tablets, blue-green algae capsules, chlorella tablets and other products.
- Higher Nature
has chlorella and ocean kelp products.
Spirulina
Spirulina is a microscopic, freshwater alga, found as corkscrew-like filaments.
It has a long history. In the 16th century, Spanish explorers in America found Aztecs harvesting what was probably Spirulina from Lake Texaco, in modern-day Mexico. This was dried and transformed into chips and loaves. Something similar happens in Africa, where local people have been collecting this microalga from Lake Chad.
Spirulina is still harvested from freshwater sources, but it is also cultivated in California, Thailand, India and China.
It is probably easier to produce a purer harvest from the cultured plants.
Spirulina is highly digestible and has often been called 'superfood' because of its nutrient-density, considered by some the world's healthiest superfood.
After the alga has been dried, the resulting commercial product has indeed a good nutritional profile.
It contains:
- 60-70% protein with a good amino acid profile, higher in protein than any other food
- 16-20% carbohydrate
- 2-3% fat
- 7-9% water
- 5-8% minerals, including iron, calcium and many others; the iron present is easily absorbed by humans, which is not always the case with iron from other plant sources
- vitamins: beta-carotene (pro-vitamin A), some vitamins of the B complex, E and K
Its outstanding nutritional profile of phytonutrients also includes essential fatty acids, including the rare essential fatty acid GLA, the nucleic acids (RNA and DNA), and phytochemicals, such as carotenoids, chlorophyll (blood purifier), and phycocyanin, a protein pigment known to inhibit cancer and to have anti-viral properties.
One way to use spirulina is to add it to food. Spirulina enhances the flavour of many dishes.
A recipe with spirulina
You can find the ingredients for the recipe on
Kalyx -
USA-based, it can ship internationally. Bulk foods are offered at discount rates.
Tesco online - In the UK. Find anything with its search box. You have to register first, but it's free and takes few seconds.
Green Potatoes
Ingredients for 4:
- 4 large baked potatoes
- 1 teaspoon red or green crushed chilli pepper
- 2 medium onions, sliced
- 2 cups peas, carrots and celery
- 2 tablespoons tamari (soy sauce) powder
- 2 teaspoons each of oregano, ginger, dried basil
- 2 tablespoons brewers yeast powder
- 1 tablespoon Spirulina powder
1. Cut potatoes in half and scoop out potato from shell.
2. Sauté all other ingredients, but not spirulina, in 1/2 cup water.
3. Add all the mixture to the potato, then add spirulina powder.
4. Put this mixture back in the shell and bake 15 minutes at 400°. Top with a vegetable sauce according to taste.
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