The Digestibility and Utilization of some Polysaccharide Carbohydrates Derived from Lichens and Marine Algæ

Abstract

During the last few years increased attention has been directed to the employment of a number of peculiar food materials hitherto restricted in use to a few countries.The most familiar of the products are furnished by the alga: and lichens, while some underground storage organs of flowering plants aft'ord the unusual compounds of the inulin type.A recent publication of the Bureau of Fisheries1 has pointed out that while marine plants are extensively utilized in France, Ireland, Scotland, and other European countries, in the East Indies, in China, and elsewhere, in no other country are such products relatively and actually so important or utilized in such a large variety of ways as in Japan.The products enter extensively into the dietary of the Japanese; and since all of the important preparations can be made from plants easily available in the United States, it has lately been suggested that they ought to find a ready use in dietetic ways in this country.2This refers especially to several groups of plant products characterized by their content of types of carbohydrates differing notably from those which constitute the staple nutrients of our diet.Carrageen, or Irish moss, dulse, laver, and vegetable gelatin, vegetable isinglass or agar-agar, are the most familiar seaweed preparations.Iceland moss represents the lichen products; while the familiar inulin-yielding plants are the edible Jerusalem artichoke (Hcliunthus tuberosus) and the Japanese Stachys