The Evolutionary Trajectory of EU Trade in Algae for Human Consumption

The food chain recently has faced diverse challenges. These include the development of new and sustainable ways of feeding a rapidly growing global population and thus to secure the availability of sufficient food and its accessibility. This is not only for the benefit of the existing population but also for future generations. These needs come up against a backdrop of increasing resource scarcity and rising levels of environmental pollution, with an impact on biodiversity loss. The consumption of edible algae results in multiple huma health benefits. In fact, they are rich of high nutritive value containing lipids, carbohydrates, essential fatty acids, vitamins, Omega 3 and mineral, plus are highly digestible proteins (Diaz et al., 2022). Due to the contents of these algae micronutrients this novel food offer antioxidants (Vigani et al., 2015), immunostimulants, antibacterial attributes (Zarbà et al., 2023). They represent an alternative to protein source (Caporgno et al., 2018) notoriously considered dangerous for human health as red meat.