Sea Power MAX Home » What is Agar? » Agar Diet Effects
Agar is a rich source of dietary fiber. Agar generally contains 74.1g of dietary fiber out of 100g of agar and is therefore the No.1 dietary fiber contained food. For example, lettuce contains only 1.1g of dietary fiber out of 100g, a 67 times difference!!
By the way, what is dietary fiber? From the name, you may imagine vegetables that contain fiber such as celery. In fact, agar contains the most fiber among all vegitables. Dietary fiber is defined as “Structure material of plant cell not digested by a person’s digestive enzyme”. Dietary fiber itself does not contain nutritional element, but it does have very important physiology functions for human body.
Amount of intake standard of dietary fiber per day is between 20-27g for adult. However, many people take only 8g-14g of dietary fiber a day from normal meals. In general, Japanese meals tend to contain more dietary fiber compared with western meals. The following table shows dietary fiber contained foods list.
| Food | Dietary Fibre Content per 100g |
| Kanten (Agar) | 74.1g |
| Kawanori Laver |
44.9g |
| Hizikia Fusiforme | 43.3g |
| Dried Mushroom | 42.5g |
| Green Laver |
38.5g |
| Ingen Bean | 19.3g |
| Carrot | 2.5g |
| Cabbage | 1.8g |
| Onion | 1.6g |
| Lettuce | 1.1g |
As you may see, most high dietary fiber contained foods above are not easily accessible at western countries. That is why we are here.
Traditional Japanese food, agar is recently reviewed by many people for the following reasons.
Therefore, anyone who would like to keep healthy is recommended to eat agar everyday. The details will be explained in other pages.
Eating 2g of agar every day is proven to achieve a high effect to solve constipation problem. According to research done by Sapporo Medical Science University, people who had constipation took 2g of agar everyday, and 75% of them solved their constipation. This is because dietary fiber has strong water holding capacity. When dietary fiber enters inside body, it expands by absorbing 250 times of water. This water is not absorbed at stomach and small intestine. This processes increase the amount of feces and soften it. Therefore, it helps to solve constipation.
Furthermore, because dietary fiber inside body expands up to 250 times, you feel full easily. Thereby, it prevents eating too much and overweight.
