Even though food items containing seaweed are consumed by many countries in the world, Sri Lankans are interested in fish products rather than the seaweed food products.
Consumption of sea weed related food can satisfy nutrition requirements and they contain a considerable proportion of iodine and other nutrients. According to the expert view, seaweed consumption can prevent communicable diseases.
Following the directives of Minister of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Mahinda Amaraweera, NARA has started experiments on producing seaweed food items in Sri Lanka and recently a variety of seaweed jelly has been introduced by NARA.
This jelly is manufactured with the minimum usage of sugar and therefore could be consumed even by the Diabetes patients.
NARA also has taken measures to extend the knowledge of producing food items using seaweed to the interested parties on free of charge basis. Even though seaweed foods are used in leading hotels in Sri Lanka, such food is not popularized among the majority of the country. Thus minister Amaraweera advised NARA to implement an awareness raising program to promote the consumption of seaweed among Sri Lankans.
Leave a Reply