It couln’t be true, could it? You’re now able to eat bacon guilt free? Well, with a unique seaweed called dulse, the answer is yes!
The new form of seaweed is absolutely packed with nutritional goodness and it’s also a great source of protein. Sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it!
Engineered and harvested by professor Chuck Toombs and scientists at Oregon State University (OSU), this very unique variety of dulse has been modified to taste just like bacon when it’s cooked. The exotic seaweed that resembles translucent red lettuce, is a type of red algae that would normally grow along the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines.
Toombs said:
“Dulse is a super food, with twice the nutritional value of kale.”
Oregon state researcher Chris Langdon and his team originally developed the seaweed in a quest to find a good source of food for edible sea snails.
Langdon realized that he had created something special when his colleague Chuck Toombs caught a sneaky glimpse of it.
Toombs stated that he could see a brand new industry on the Oregon Coast cropping up as a result of the characteristics of the seaweed. Toombs began to work side by side with the university’s Food Innovation Center, which conjured up a variety of different foods with the unique seaweed as the main ingredient.
Dulse isn’t actually a new thing. It’s been around for a really long time already, yet its uses have been forgotten. It has been produced and consumed by people in Europe for hundreds of years and is a natural source of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Langdon told OSU:
“This stuff is pretty amazing. When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”
Dried red algae is already available in health food supermarkets but it is often very expensive. Langdon claims that he can grow up to 30 pounds of this particular strain of bacon-flavored seaweed per week but has plans of increasing production to more than triple that.
The team are yet to carry out an analysis on whether or not commercializing the seaweed would be practical, but they think that the vegan and vegetarian markets may be interested.
The team of students and researchers at the university’s Food Innovation Center are already conjuring up delicious dishes in their kitchen with dulse as the star ingredient. Meals such as Veggie burgers, salad dressing, and even beer.
