Human Consumption
Several species are used as food. Dulse (Palmaria palmata) and Porphyra are the best known in the British Isles.
In East and Southeast Asia, agar is most commonly produced from Gelidium amansii. In Asia, rhodophytes are important sources of food, such as nori. The high vitamin and protein content of this food makes it attractive, as does the relative simplicity of cultivation, which began in Japan more than 300 years ago.
Read more about this topic: Red Algae
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or consumption:
“The necessary has never been mans top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, mans greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.”
—Eric Hoffer (19021983)
“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
—Thomas Jefferson (17431826)