The Animal Kingdom, Agriculture⋯ and Seaweeds

Melania L Cornish,Alan T Critchley,Michéal Mac Monagail

doi:10.3390/jmse8080574

Melania L Cornish, Alan T Critchley + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8080574

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Abstract

Marine macroalgae (seaweeds), are amongst the first multicellular organisms and, as such, the precursors to land plants. By the time ‘land’ animals arrived on the scene, terrestrial plants were plentiful and varied, and herbivorous diets developed in concert with the food sources most commonly available. However, skip forward several hundred millennia, and with the advent of agriculture, approximately 10,000 years ago, dietary diversity began to change. Today, the world is experiencing increasingly higher rates of debilitating, non-communicable diseases—might there be a connection? This paper reviews scientific evidence for the judicious use of various seaweeds in the reduction of heat stress, enhanced immunity, improved growth performance, and methane reduction in animals. The extensive, (super) prebiotic effects of selected macroalgae will also be highlighted. Key studies conducted across the animal kingdom provide considerable support that there is an overwhelming need for the guided and wise applications of increased usage of selected seaweeds in feed, food and supplements. Particular attention will be paid to the bioactive components, and nutraceutical qualities, of various seaweeds, i.e., the brown, Saccharina (Laminaria) spp. and Ascophyllum nodosum, and the red alga Chondrus crispus. Suggestions are put forward for benefits to be derived from their further applications.

Highlights

With the lack of lignified tissues and thereby extensive fossilized evidence, it is challenging for researchers to prove definitively that seaweeds were eaten as a crucial part of the diet by early animals, including Homo sapiens
In a detailed review highlighting the benefits of macroalgae in poultry feed, it was reported that the addition of 0.5 kg of A. nodosum per metric ton of feed significantly reduced the effects of prolonged heat stress on the birds [80]
It is obviously unreasonable to consider that all the members of the global, human population may return to a lifestyle of foraging, hunting, and fishing, for the acquisition of a nutritionally balanced, wild-based diet

Summary

Introduction

With the lack of lignified tissues and thereby extensive fossilized evidence, it is challenging for researchers to prove definitively that seaweeds were eaten as a crucial part of the diet by early animals, including Homo sapiens. Their results ranged from 8.81 to 34.74%, whereas C4 plants are usually around 12% and C3 plants around 28% [4,5], and this effectively discounts isotopic analysis at this time, as a tool to define early seaweed consumption This leaves only, so far, tooth wear potentially from sand particles, and the knowledge that a stable supply of all the essential nutrients for neonatal brain growth has a high probability of exerting dietary influence on development. It is noteworthy that the timeline related to the beginning of the agricultural revolution is centuries after the era when crucial human brain development is considered to have occurred, 2.5–2.0 mya Hominin populations by this time consisted of larger family groups who had the cognitive capacity to communicate and cooperate with one another, to hunt, and to make rudimentary tools [19]. It is hoped that this review will provoke some thought and consideration of tools that may be naturally available in the form of macroalgae

Bioactive Compounds in Macroalgae

Findings

Conclusions—One IS what One Eats