Algae as Nutritional and Functional Food Sources

Abstract

Algae are a large and diverse group of autotrophic eukaryotic and photosynthetic aquatic organisms [1]. They can be divided into multi-cellular seaweeds, and unicellular microalgae (including cyanobacteria) [2]. In the last years, there has been a growing interest in algae as an essential part of the food of the future. Using the Scopus database (Elsevier’s abstract and citation database), a search was performed from 1990 to 2022, selecting “algae and foods” as keywords; a total of 17216 publications were obtained. Figure 1 shows that the literature growth rate is steadily increasing and follows an exponential model.