It is 8am on a Tuesday and I’m stirring jellified sea moss into my morning brew. Or at least, I’m trying to – little lumps of the stuff keep bobbing up and eyeballing me from the milky surface. Clearly, a plant that grows on rocks by the Atlantic coast doesn’t dissolve. Still, I drink up, on the advice not only of the woman I bought it from, at a south London farmers’ market, but Kim Kardashian, Cardi B and a host of TikTokers who have been adding it to their tea, smoothies, yoghurts, juices – even eating it straight from the jar – in pursuit of its alleged health benefits.
The texture is as I expected – slimy, like a juiced oyster – but the flavour eludes me. There is a back note of muddy seawater, but otherwise it tastes of very little. Like seaweed, sea moss is a generic term that covers various species of algae growing in coastal waters. The most famous of these is Irish moss, formally known as Chondrus crispus, which can be found in rocky regions around the Irish coast, as well as on the Atlantic coasts of Britain, mainland Europe and North America. Historically, this moss was harvested for carrageenan, which is extracted to be use in food manufacturing for its gelling, thickening and stabilising properties. Since being branded a superfood, however, it has become more widely available raw and in supplement form: in pills, powders, gummies and the gel that is still bobbing around in my cuppa.
