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Alright, John Kohler with okraw.com and we got an opening shot here. We're on the san
Francisco bay, beautiful marine county, CA, on the coat here, and today we're going to
be talking about seaweed, hopefully before the sun goes down, and you can see I come
out here often times at low tide, and today happens to be just one of those times that
I came our here and it happens to be high tide, but if were at low tide, what we'd see
is all these rocks exposed and you can see right in the waves there some kelp, brown
kelp, actually floating around and if it was low tide, the kelp would be exposed. You'd
see all these rocks and you'd actually hike on the rocks and more easily harvest the kelp.
Because it's high tide, it's a lot more difficult to do so. So, we're going to talk about kelp
in a little but and you're going to learn a lot more today about brown kelp, and today
we have these things. Actually, it's called sea tangle noodle company kelp noodles, and
these kelp noodles says, 'great for salad, healthful, delicious, easy to prepare, and
fun to eat. Made with mineral rich sea kelp, low in carbs and calories and fat-free, ready
to eat, neutral taste,' and it says on there, 'a raw food.' It says, 'product of USA, net
wt 12 oz.' So, basically it says kelp noodles are a sea vegetable in the form of an easy
to eat noodle made of only kelp, a sea vegetable, sodium alginate, sodium salt extracted from
brown seaweed, and water. 'Kelp noodles are fat-free, gluten-free, and very low in carbohydrates
and calories. So, here's the nutrition facts. It's basically total fat: 0, sat fat: 0, cholesterol:
0, sodium: 1%, total carbs: 1 g, dietary fiber: 1 g, vitamin a: 0, vitamin c: 0, iron: 14%
and calcium: 15%. So, you know, there's not a whole lot of nutrition in these kelp noodles,
in my opinion. So, you know, I've been seeing this company at the different trade shows
for some time now. I'll often ask them about these noodles and they give me very shy answers,
so I figured I'd look into this myself more, and we'll go ahead and rip this package open
here of the kelp noodles. How do these things look like this, right? These are kelp noodles,
and we're looking at, we're basically on the bay of San Francisco bay and we're looking
at brown kelp right here. So, this is the kelp right here that I just pulled up. How
does this stuff get to look like this stuff, you know? Come on, let's think about that.
These are not, you know, 100% kelp. I mean, this is 100% kelp. You want to make noodles
out of this and eat this stuff, that's great, but if you're eating this stuff, you know,
and you think you're getting kelp noodles, you know, you got another thing coming to
you. Maybe I got a golden gate bridge to sell you, too. So, let's go ahead and see what's
in the kelp noodles here. So, the ingredients are water, we have water all around. Hopefully
it's purified water. Kelp, and I mean, once again, the kelp noodles look nothing like
this kelp here, and the final ingredient is sodium alginate. So, the main thing is, you
know, we know what water is, we know what kelp is. This is kelp. The noodles do not
look like the kelp here. The last ingredient is sodium alginate. So, the question is, what
is sodium alginate? So, did some research there, and sodium alginate is, you know, a
white powder, probably looks something like this white powder here, you know. So, we have
kelp noodles, white powder, and real kelp here. So, you know, this white powder, also
known as sodium alginate, what they do is they take this kelp, you know, brown kelp
and they put it through some kind of process involving probably heat, also probably including
chemicals and, you know, pressure, and they're basically somehow taking this kelp and extracting
it into this white crystalline powder. So, you know, number 1, a white crystalline powder
is not a whole food. It does not look like kelp or anything like that. It does not even
resemble a kelp, a white crystalline powder. So, the question is, why are we putting it
into our bodies? You know, there are no wrong labeling laws and this says 'a raw food' and
people say 'oh, I'm raw, and it says it's raw so I can eat it,' and they don't really
look into these things and it really bothers me because, you know, the nutrition on this
is like hardly like nothing, you know. I've had friends say this stuff tastes like plastic
unless you cook it really well. Well, you know, hey, if it tastes like plastic, well,
what do you think it is, then? So, you know, let's thing about this. If you want to eat
kelp noodles, you know, let's go down to the ocean and get some real kelp or get some dried
kelp and the other thing is, you know, if you buy kelp flakes, they're green and they
tastes really, really fishy. These things have no tastes. So, the second ingredient's
kelp and it's not tasting fishy. So, they're doing some processing and it's not maybe as
raw and natural as we want it, you know. The whole point of the raw foods diet is to eat,
you know, fresh, ripe, whole, foods, including fruits and vegetables and definitely some
seaweed. You'll see later that I had a clip, you know. I was in a health food store and
I had fucas tips, and actually, I want to show you, these are the fucas tips. So, you
know, here we have the leaves of kelp, and this is the actual kelp, and on the edge of
the kelp, there's these like little things that are little like puffy and bubbly and
you take these and I just pinch them off lie this and I'll dehydrate this and when you
dehydrate it, hey, it looks like a little mermaid tail, but when you dehydrate it, it
becomes like puffy. So, the only thing I can say it reminds me of is like corn puffs when
I was a kid, you know. If you dehydrate this and eat this, it's like corn puffs. It's really
good and has a nice salty flavor and this is real, you know, seaweed. This is what we
should be eating. I mean, if you did want to do these noodles that are some seaweed,
you could try something called like, I think it's called e-weed, and it should be new.
It's coming out on the marketplace and to my knowledge, so far that's 100% seaweed.
The other thing you could try, also is something called, I think it's called sea spaghetti,
and that's just some other kind of seaweed, actually, too, that jus comes in long strands
and it's not highly processed like these, you know, sea tangles, you know kelp noodles
that're totally processed and in my opinion should not be included in a raw food diet.
So, hopefully you've learned something from this episode, and I'll have a lot more information
coming from myself. Be sure to visit my website, okraw.com for more information about me and
what I'm trying to teach people. Thank you.