Hello John,

Thank you for contacting me with your inquiry about hijiki.


Rather than being a source of heavy metals in the diet, sea vegetables have been shown to cleanse the body of heavy metals and other toxins. Alginate or alginic acid is a polysaccharide that is abundant in sea vegetables, especially brown sea vegetables including hijiki, wakame, kombu and arame.

Research conducted by a team of scientist led by Dr. Y. Tanaka at McGill University, in Canada, have demonstrated that alginic acid binds with heavy metals in the intestines, renders them indigestible, and causes them to be eliminated primarily through the urine. They concluded that the body would not absorb any heavy metals such as barium, cadmium, lead, mercury, zinc and arsenic, as well as radioactive strontium-90 present in the intestines, from any source.

Drs. Seiben and Teruko Arasaki, well known Japanese authorities on sea vegetables concluded that, "Heavy metals taken into the human body are rendered insoluble by alginic acid in the intestines and cannot, therefore, be absorbed into the body tissues." They further report that alginic acid in sea vegetables actually helps bind and draw out any similar toxins that are already stored in our bodies.

• Research conducted by a team of scientists at the Department of Food Science and Technology, National Fisheries University, Japan states, "Arsenic in prepared edible brown alga hijiki, Hizikia fusiforme', "To reduce the arsenic content of the leaves and branches of an edible brown alga, hijiki Hizikia fusiforme, the Japanese traditional washing and soaking process before cooking was shown to be effective: 32 to 60% of the arsenic was removed from the alga at room temperature. Increasing the amount of water in which the hijiki was soaked did not affect arsenic removal. On the other hand, arsenic content decreased linearly as the temperature used to wash and soak hijiki increased from 0 to 60° C. in the washed and soaked hijiki."

Check out the whole article at: http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=79


I feel Eden is the best company to buy from as they are careful to test there product.


I will call and ask what they are doing to find a new source after Japan's nuclear disaster.

Cheers, Julie

Hello Arlene,

I have include recipes that cover a broad range of dietary restrictions and lifestyles. There are many recipes that are vegan, raw and vegetarian. I also include recipes that have animal products in them for those who are unable to digest vegetable base proteins such as grains, beans and legumes.

I believe there are "7 billion diets for 7 billion people." For information on my own food journey you can read:

Former Vegetarian Goes for Red Meat

http://www.juliedaniluk.com/recipes/the-former-vegetarian-goes-for-red-meat.html

Here is a quote from the follow-up comments:

"I agree that a vegan diet is helpful for many people.

Why I was unable to continue is I developed a terrible allergy to tree nuts, gluten grains and many beans.

If you can imagine what your world would be like traveling a great deal if most vegan sources of protein were removed from your diet!

I know you may feel that I could have survived on flax, hemp and chia seeds but if I only ate that, my immune system would have become sensitive to that as well. That was the case with my sister Lynn!

What my body needed was tremendous diversity of protein sources. I needed to fool my immune system to allow it to relax and calm down!

Now my body is free of pain, it is more energetic than it has been in years and I am much happier. I don't take eating wild game, fish or poultry lightly. I see it as a sacrifice and try to have as many plant protein days as possible.

7 billion diets for 7 billion people! Here is the Dala Lama's take on the subject…

vegetarianstar.com/.../...

"The Dalai Lama frequently receives criticism from some in the vegetarian community for continuing to eat meat while promoting non-violence. A former vegetarian, he started eating small amounts of animal flesh on the advice on a doctor after developing gall bladder issues and hepatitis.
When he spoke with NDTV, he insisted that from a religious standpoint, eating meat is not necessarily against a monk’s principles.

“In vinaya no prohibition in eating meat, so monks in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, they take both veg and non veg food. One time I asked, discussed this subject with a monk from Sri Lanka about 40 years ago, he said Buddhist monks are neither veg nor non veg… he should accept whatever he gets, so that’s the principle. But vinaya clearly mentions that meat which was purposely killed for you was not to be eaten but in general was not prohibited, some books like langaavatarasutra prohibited any kind of meat, including fish etc but some other texts not prohibiting, so different case, I think practically in northern part of Tibet, no vegetables. Very difficult. So that’s practical reason.”
Now, he describes his meat eating habits as consuming it “once or twice a week.”

Cheers, Julie