Spiru… what? Pond gunk or superfood?

Recently the lovely people at myprotein.com sent me some spirulina, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The first time I heard of spirulina was nearly a decade ago when crazy “doctor” Gillian McKeith talked about it on ‘You are what you eat’. McKeith’s credentials have since been rubbished, but that doesn’t mean that everything she talked about was wrong – few people would argue with eating a healthy diet including plenty of fresh fruit and veg.

Spirulina has been described as a ‘super food’ as it is high in protein, iron and vitamin B12 – as a vegetarian, this is great news. The benefits of it are described below:

But what is spirulina? It’s algae or cyanobacteria, which doesn’t sound particularly delicious, and I’ll be honest, it doesn’t look terribly appetising.

So, what should I do with the spirulina? I knew that most people use it in smoothies, but what should I combine it with? I turned to Pinterest for inspiration: Spirulina Recipes We Love.

Unfortunately, I’ve not done my weekly shopping yet, so I had to choose a simple recipe that included ingredients that I had in my house:

Spirulina Green Juice

1 cucumber
2 medium-sized apples
1 small lemon or lime
1 teaspoon Spirulina powder

I gathered together the required ingredients, which was easy enough. There were no instructions with the recipe, but I figured that it should be easy enough to make a smoothie. I don’t have a juicer, but that didn’t worry me. I chopped the ends off the cucumber and cored the apple. Peeling the cucumber and the apples was probably unnecessary. Then I got to the lemon – hmm, what should I do with it? I carefully zested it and then cut off the pith and removed the pips.

I chopped the ingredients a little and then threw them into my blender with a little water.

After I had blended the ingredients, I added a teaspoon of spirulina powder.

I will admit that the finished result looked somewhat like the murky water in the lake that I swim in! On the plus side, it did smell good.

I took my first sip and was pleasantly surprised. It tasted good 😀 There was enough for two glasses, so I gave the other to my husband, Stu.

Stuart was a little more wary, but I think his feedback was generally good: “It tastes of lemon, but has a green thing texture. It’s a bit chewy.”

Overall, I think it was a success, but I probably need a better blender and adding a little more water may have helped! I sipped the smoothie before adding the spirulina and although I noticed a slight difference, it wasn’t unpleasant.

If you’re thinking of improving your health in 2015, there are plenty of free courses (MOOCs – Massive Online Open Courses) that are available online. I’m thinking about doing ‘The body matters’ on EdX.

Have you tried spirulina? What did you think of it? Can you recommend any recipes?

If you’d like a discount on spirulina, visit: http://www.myprotein.com/voucher-codes.list

To find out more about the myprotein.com Spirulina, visit this site: http://www.myprotein.com/sports-nutrition/spirulina/10530515.html