My Response to Dr. Andrew Weil's Assessment of Spirulina and Chlorella

Dr. Weil does not have much to say about spirulina and chlorella, yet they are the most powerful foods known. In his Article on Spirulina and chlorella, he states the following: “ Spirulina and chlorella are two varieties of freshwater algae - primitive plants that are cultivated for nutritional use, dried and sold as dark green powders or tablets. They are very expensive and heavily promoted as miracle supplements.

Expense is relative when you are speaking about the cost of any food. You will spend $4 or $5 on a box of cereal but you will get almost no nutritional value out of that box of cereal even though the box states otherwise. This is because the body has tremendous difficulty absorbing nutrients from dead foods, especially those that have been highly processed. Like all cooked foods, the box of cereal will do nothing to improve your health. However, when you spend $40 on a large bottle of chlorella or spirulina, you have spent money on foods that can radically change your health for the better. When you think of it in those terms, a box of cereal costs a fortune because it provides the body with little nutrition and, like all cooked foods, lead to all disease. As I often state, we spend a fortune making ourselves sick when for a very small amount of money we can obtain true health, especially when we spend our money on true superfoods such as spirulina and chlorella.

No food can perform miracles of health in the body. Rather it is what the body will do with those nutrients once they have been consumed that allows the body to cure itself of any disease. Vitamin A in large doses can help a person feel better when they have a cold, but it is a band aid that can only help the body in the short term because it does not lead to true health. It fools us into thinking that taking supplements are a healthy thing to do when in fact only eating raw fruits and vegetables can lead us to being truly healthy.

Dr. Weil falls into the trap of stating that algae such as spirulina and chlorella are supplements when they are not. Spirulina and Chlorella did not earn the title of superfoods because they might be beneficial to one person, but not another. They earned that exalted title because they are the most perfect foods known, containing ideal compliments of amino acids (pre-digested proteins), carbohydrates and fats. A person could not only survive by exclusively eating these superfoods, they would be incredibly healthy doing so. Ideally, however, we should consume a broad array of raw foods in order to obtain optimal health, not limit them to certain food groups.

Spirulina and Chlorella are not supplements. Supplements are collections of vitamins, minerals, proteins and other dead nutrients. While their profile may look good on the back of the nutrition panel of their container, in reality these nutrients will not be assimilated by the body the way nutrients from raw foods will. There is no substitute fov what God provides for us by way of raw food nutrients, nor is the variety limited in any way. The foods that we know and regularly consume are but a slight fraction of the plethora of foods that are available worldwide.

Supplements are produced from extracts and concentrates, which are not alive. There is no place for true supplements in the world of Achieving Great Health. Spirulina and Chlorella are often referred to as supplements, even by prominent naturalists, but this is a misnomer. For instance, I eat 3 – 5 cloves of garlic each day. One could say I am supplementing my diet with them, but that does not mean that raw garlic should be referred to as a supplement. If you were to extract the oil or specific nutrients from garlic and consume it, then that would be considered a supplement. But when the food is consumed whole with nothing extracted from it, it is not a supplement.

When alga is harvested fresh, then either powdered or tableted, it is essentially unchanged from its original state and therefore must still be categorized as a food, not a supplement. Spirulina and Chlorella are whole foods and eating them is like eating a banana or apple or broccoli. You can use them to supplement your diet with the protein and other broad array of nutrients they possess, but they should always be called what they truly are: Whole Foods.

Dr. Weil also states: “They are good sources of chlorophyll, but there is little to no research supporting the claims made about the algae.”

Spirulina and Chlorella are excellent sources of chlorophyll, but that is like saying that garlic is a good source of fatty acids. Garlic has a vast array of incredible health properties beyond simply being a good source of fatty acids and so is true of Spirulina and Chlorella. They are the two most nutritionally dense and have the broadest array of nutrients of any foods known. I have written two books on Spirulina and Chlorella and of course have researched them extensively. My second book, Achieving Great Health, became a struggle for me to determine which studies not to include in my book because there are so many of them. The scientific research that has been done on Spirulina and Chlorella are scholarly, extensive and come from countries all over the world. It is astounding that a prominent physician such as Dr. Andrew Weil knows almost nothing about the two most important whole foods on the planet.