ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a group of polysaccharides from one of the world's most abundant natural resources: seaweed. Seaweed has been used as part of the human diet for at least 3000 years and the Vikings used it for wound dressing. Controlled drying can be used to make fibres or films of alginate which can be used to protect fresh meat and fish from surface bacterial contamination and dehydration. The Vikings reputedly used brown seaweed in wound management. As often happens before the world had the power of chemical insight, much progress had been made by simple trial and error of known materials, although it has taken almost a millennium to show that these old warriors had made an inspired choice. The modern introduction of alginates into wound management followed the commercial production in the 1930s of calcium alginate fibre. Unlike alginates, carrageenan use is dominated by food applications, particularly in connection with milk-based products.
