Spirulina at its best!
There are many spirulina products, which advertised as fresh food or raw food in the media every day. "Fresh and raw food "is a fairly new term that we’ve been seeing on food labels and in food marketing in general. As it is so new, it is yet to be standardized and certified by an official controlling entity like US-FDA, or any other body. As always, any food claiming to be “Fresh & Raw” should be truthful, otherwise, it would confuse or even misleading the consumers.
More and more people are incorporating what they believe to be fresh foods into their diets principally for health and taste reasons. But there is debate and confusion over what actually constitutes ‘fresh & raw’ and what the characteristics should be to maintain a food’s ‘freshness’ quality at the point of sale.
Spirulina is a sensitive living organism, just like us, it requires water to survive. While being "alive", fresh spirulina contains living enzymes in its "water". In general, the act of heating food over 45 degrees Celsius destroys enzymes in food.(Enzymes start to degrade in as little as 40 degrees C). As we know, spirulina is considered to be healthy for us because of it living enzymes.
Water is the key to life, without it, we all die in a matter of days, this is also true for "living spirulina" In fact, dehydration is key to many common health problems. All spirulina powder products were created using some sort of heat processing to remove the majority of the water content. Most spirulina powders are spray-dried at over 90 degrees C reducing the water content to near zero to give it longer “shelf life”. But by doing this, the most valued properties of spirulina are being "destroyed". If you have ever tasted dry powdered spirulina, you may have sensed a fishy or burnt taste in your mouth. What you are tasting is just that life-less spirulina. But simply adding water to a dead spirulina powder won’t bring it back to "life".
Furthermore, tests show that all non-micro-encapsulated powders were unstable in terms of β-carotene content in the presence of natural light and oxygen showing 90% degradation over a 7-day period.
At DQS, we are trying to provide our customers with the best possible spirulina, which is in fresh paste form. The fresh spirlina is harvested, rinsed to reduce the left over culture medium, then cool stored. So, when you buy a fresh spirulina from DQS, you will have the "living" spirulina with its freshness , smell-less, and complete cell water. The DQS team believe this is the best way to make-used the full potential of spirulina.
