Spirulina Powder Taste: Moss-y, Seaweed-y, Grass-y, Thick-ish, Love It!
This deserves its own entry.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to describe the taste. If this is something that worries you… I’m sorry, but you’ll have to try yourself.
I wasn’t sure about the taste at first (meaning before buying it) as I could see online people were asking about it… So I took the plunge. I knew it would be weird, I just didn’t now how weird it would be.
Would I like it? Hate it? Love it? I knew I wouldn’t be indifferent to it.
You see… spirulina tastes like… Ugh, how to explain… Strong, seaweed-y, green (as in like grass), kind of sweet, like a plant, moss-y.
This is the best I can come up with. As I said, it is something you’ll have to try yourself and decide if it’s a taste you like, love , hate or simply dislike.
I Actually Love the Taste
I tried to explain what spirulina powder tastes like above, but what I didn’t say is that I personally LOVE the taste. I’ve found my perfect combination: spirulina powder and cereal powder.
Where I live in the Canary Islands we eat a powdered and roasted cereal made from wheat and/or corn. It’s called ‘gofio‘. I find that spirulina and gofio go very well together!
Basically I add both powders to a glass of soya or oat milk (any plant milk will probably do). I warm it up in the microwave, just slightly so it’s not cold from the fridge, I add sweetener (yes, I do, my bad, but I do like it this way), I then add a teaspoon of each powder to the warm-ish plant milk (5 grams of spirulina powder and 5 grams of gofio powder) and I thoroughly enjoy this drink.
In fact, I look forward to drinking this mix daily!
How I Take My Spirulina Powder
Here’s my spirulina. I put it into a container for easiness although I’ll move away from plastic at some point.
Here’s the above mentioned ‘gofio’. Love the stuff. More powder-power towards my drink!
Plant milk into a glass. Any plant milk will do. I use soya or oat milk.
My bad. Sweetener. Oh well. You don’t have to.
Microwave. Again, you can warm up or leave cold. I like it a little warm because it’s morning time and it feels nice when drinking it.
Gofio goes in first. Otherwise the spoon will stain the gofio green from the spirulina powder (it must be a potent dye). About 1 tsp (you can skip this step and only add spirulina, or, add another cereal if you’d like to try my recipe).
Then the spirulina. About 1tsp.
Stirring takes a little time (both powders thicken the drink).
Gofio creates little balls while the spirulina gets a little lumpy.
More stirring…
Here we go: lumps. I don’t mind them.
I know it looks a little yucky… Yours will look the same : )
I’m so ready for this! I actually LOVE the taste.
Here we go…
Everything goes blue-green: lips, teeth, tongue…
And, all gone!
It feels like I’ve had a nice breakfast: this thick, fully flavoured drink does the job really nicely I must say.
Reason Why I Take Spirulina Powder
Besides the obvious (look at this, it’s packed with goodies!), there’s a main reason why I take spirulina powder 3 to 4 times a week.
I suffer from food addiction (certain foods, like biscuits, sponge cake, butter and so on, only a few foods trigger my addition, meaning I can’t stop easily once I take the first bite and eat way too much). I’ve known for a long time I’ve had to do something about my bad eating habits. Don’t get me wrong, I’m Spanish and we eat quite well here (and particularly in the Canary Islands) where there’s plenty of fresh vegetables, fruit, etc. Also the diet is mediterranean like and we do cook a lot at home. I rarely eat tin food and even when you eat out everything has been homecooked so it’s delicious and very healthy.
When I was living in the UK I did not eat very well though. Back here I’ve started to eat my potaje regularly as well as trying to buy organic as and when possible and eating in an organised manner (3 times a day, not skipping breakfast, etc, you know, that sort of thing).
But this is not enough. I need to ‘trick’ my body into thinking it can’t really go crazy with my addiction foods. Don’t get me wrong, I hardly succeed and there are many times when I relapse and go back to buying Digestive biscuits but it used to be a lot worse and at least I’m aware of it.
I have found that if I start the day healthy in terms of eating there’s a huge chance that I’ll end the day with healthy eating too. It’s when I don’t follow this rule that I can mess it up and have something naughty at some point during the day, even at the earlier times (today, for example, I relapsed with a massive donut we call ‘pachanga‘, ouch!). So I have to find tools that work for me when it comes to eating.
As soon as I wake up in the morning I make myself drink water with some fresh lemon in it. This is easy for me to prepare and it feels refreshing. When I DON’T DO THIS, I easily eat badly at some point during the day. But by sticking to this, I’m ready for the next healthy eating habit if that makes sense.
I then have my coffee (a must here in Spain!) and, a little later, breakfast (I keep it very healthy as well, I won’t go into details here).
Here’s where the spirulina drink comes in. A little after I’ve had my healthy breakfast (about 30 mins to 1 hour later) I prepare the spirulina powder drink. Remember, I mix it with the gofio and add both powders to the sweetened warmed up plant milk.
By this time I’ve already covered the morning and have kept it very healthy (coffee is not a problem for me, this is something I’ve given up in the past but I’m ok with it now). It will be VERY DIFFICULT for me to mess this up at lunch time, as I’m already in the ‘healthy mood’ if that makes sense. My body takes it in nicely and doesn’t demand naughty food, at all. Almost as if it didn’t registerer it exists.
At lunch time I’m also ready to cook something healthy. Something that won’t take long but that sits well with what I had in the morning.
You get the drift I think. After lunch, half the day has gone and I’m eating well! At this point I’m excited about a lovely, healthy dinner and look forward to both cooking it and eating it. Before going to bed I will have something sweet but i’ll keep it to something like fat free coconut ice cream which is quite healthy..
Why the Spirulina Drink?
Why the spirulina drink to stick with the healthy eating habit throughout the day?
Well, the spirulina drink is KEY here. The powder in itself is weird enough to make me feel I’m taking it to the next level when it comes to healthy eating. The fact that it also tastes weird (and, again, I LOVE the taste) makes it a huge bonus (I feel like: hey Patri, you’re really making an effort!) and it just feels like I’m well into healthy eating.
The fact that I mix it with a cereal powder means not only that I’m enhancing the flavour (for some reason they really work well together in terms of taste) but it feels like when sports-y people add those powders to drinks to enhance muscle or whatever it is they drink I think it’s protein, not sure (I’m not sportsy at all by the way). And, finally, because of the weird taste (which, again, I love) and the fact that the whole thing thickens up quite a bit (so I have to drink it slowly) makes it for a rare treat that’s SOOO GREEN that by this time it feels like I’ve really, really made an effort and that I’m taking extremely good care of myself.
The spirulina drink really does the trick! When I don’t take it, my chances of eating badly on that day are pretty high, I’ve noticed. When I do take it, though, I don’t really eat anything that’s not good for me on that day The stuff is so strong and weird and out of the ordinary (not to mention that because there’s no juicing involved it’s damned easy to prepare!) that my body readjusts itself into ‘healthy mode throughout the day’.
So, as you can see, spirulina powder is a win win for me. Not only it gives me all the benefits of spirulina, which are MANY, but it also sets me off to have a good, healthy-eating-habit day.
Let me know your thoughts about spirulina powder taste in the comments below and also if you have any tricks to say within a normal, healthy eating day.
Since this is something that I think is good to take earlier on in the day (I just can’t see myself having the spirulina powder drink in the evening due to the strange taste, it’s more of a ‘juicing’/smoothie thing if you see what I mean).
My Other Entry on Spirulina
I’ve done a lot of research on spirulina and I wrote an entry, you must check it out as it is a great entry in terms of what this stuff entails. I spent a long time researching it, take a look here: on raw spirulina.
Where to Buy Spirulina
With this post I either totally convinced you to take spirulina or I totally convinced you not to! I’m not sure, but if you’ve decided to give it a try you can get it from your local health store. The one I buy I get from a herbal shop in Spain (it’s a Spanish brand) but I’ll leave you here with the brands I’ve researched and trust as you won’t be able to purchase the one I buy.
Nutrex-Hawaii Spirulina
A very popular brand of Spirulina powder, known for producing high-quality Spirulina powder that tastes better than other brands because the spirulina grows under natural sunlight.
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Earthrise Spirulina
This spirulina grows under a controlled environment – no herbicides or pesticides. No added chemicals is a must and this brand seems to deliver. See what you think.
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Helpful Resources
PubMed on Spirulina (lots of helpful articles)
