Nutraceuticals, trace metals and radioactivity in edible seaweeds for food safety: An overview

Seaweeds are of potential nutraceutical and medicinal values due to their wide range of constituents such as proteins, carbohydrates, fatty acids, peptides, minerals, vitamins, and hydrocolloids. However, the seaweeds accumulate toxic heavy metals from their habitats, depending on land discharges, seasons, growth phase and duration of life cycle. As seaweeds are widely used as seafood and food ingredients of various delicious food items, some countries have regulatory rules for daily consumption of seaweeds and seaweeds based food items due to presence of heavy metals, but many countries even don't have such kind of regulatory limits, according to Food Administration organization (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO). Realising the importance of this issues, the present review aims to revaluate the biochemical composition of edible seaweeds including their heavy metals and radioactive elements for their potential use for human consumption so as to ensure food safety of the seaweeds. Suparna Roy | P. Anantharaman"Nutraceuticals, trace metals and radioactivity in edible seaweeds for food safety: An overview" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-3 , April 2018, URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd11137.pdf http://www.ijtsrd.com/biological-science/botany/11137/nutraceuticals-trace-metals-and-radioactivity-in-edible-seaweeds-for-food-safety-an-overview/suparna-roy