Alginate Sheds Fat

This is an extremely important result and not just for the obvious.  Alginate does not need to be a flavor source at all.  Thus it can be folded easily into processed foods.  Thus we can use it to prepare hamburgers.

This means that the fast food industry mainstay can be engineered to be effectively fat neutral or even fat negative in order to offset the impact of the deep fryer.

The health problem posed by the fast food industry has been its reliance on fat rich foods.  A large portion of that problem can now be eliminated with the strategic addition  of alginate.

A well prepared hamburger is not your friend as your gall bladder will tell you.  Alginate changes that, so expect it to be readily available in pure powdered form sometime soon if it is not already.

Eat This Asian Snack to Lose Weight

By RealAge

You know those pills that block fat absorption? There may be a natural snack that offers a similar benefit: toasted nori.

This crispy Japanese munchie -- made of thin sheets of seaweed that have been roasted or toasted and lightly salted -- could help your body block fat calories. In a new study, a special fiber found in seaweed appeared to inhibit fat absorption by over 75 percent!

Natural Fat-Blocker

The fat-blocking fiber in seaweed is called alginate. And in a recent lab study using an artificial gut, alginate interfered with a key enzyme responsible for breaking down dietary fat. The likely result in a real gut? The undigested fat would just pass right through and get expelled, which means fewer fat calories to use or store. Another small study using alginate-spiked drinks provides additional evidence of the fat-blocking effect. In that study, getting just 1.5 grams per day of alginate fiber caused a reduction in calorie intake over the course of a week. (Here's another way that extra fiber can help you lose weight.)

The Road to Alginate 

More studies are needed before alginate can be recommended as a weight loss aid. But the research is a good reason to be more adventurous in your eating. Start enjoying dishes made out of -- or seasoned with -- edible seaweed and you'll get not only a fiber boost but also a healthy dose of calcium, iron, magnesium, and B vitamins. Toasted nori snacks -- available in many Asian markets -- are just one way to enjoy produce from the sea. You can also make soups or salads with wakame, a slightly sweet leafy sea vegetable.

Uses from Wikipedia

Its form as a flavorless gum, is used by the foods industry to increase viscosity and as an emulsifier. It is also used in indigestion tablets and the preparation of dental impressions.

A major application for sodium alginate is in reactive dye printing, as as thickener for reactive dyestuffs (such as the Procion cotton-reactive dyes) in textile screen-printing and carpet jet-printing. Alginates do not react with these dyes and wash out easily, unlike starch-based thickeners.

Sodium alginate is a good chelator for pulling radioactive toxins from the body, such as iodine-131 and strontium-90 that have taken the place of their non-radioactive counterparts.[5][6] It is also used in immobilizing enzymes by inclusion.

As a food additive, sodium alginate is used especially in the production of gel-like foods. For example, bakers' "Chellies" are often gelled alginate "jam." Also, the pimento stuffing in prepared cocktail olives is usually injected as a slurry at the same time that the stone is ejected; the slurry is subsequently set by immersing the olive in a solution of a calcium salt, which causes rapid gelation by electrostatic cross-linking.[citation needed] A similar process can be used to make "chunks" of everything from cat food through "reformed" ham or fish to "fruit" pieces for pies. It has the E-number 401.

Nowadays, it is also used in the biological experiments for the immobilization of cells to obtain important products like alcohols, organic acids, etc.

In recent years, sodium alginate has been used in molecular gastronomy at some of the best restaurants in the world. Ferran Adria pioneered the technique, and it has since been used by chefs such as Grant Achatz and Heston Blumenthal. Sodium alginate is combined with calcium lactate or similar compound to create spheres of liquid surrounded by a thin jelly membrane.