Green lipped mussel cooking is surely interesting and challenging, especially for those enjoying shellfish foods. But despite the wonderful taste of these products, cooked mussels aren't as healthy as raw ones.
High and low temperatures, such as those used when preparing the shellfish in the oven or on the stove respectively when freezing the seafood are proven to alter the components in these shellfish, reducing their health efficiency drastically.
So in case you hoped or thought eating cooked New Zealand mussels will strengthen your body and improve your overall health, we're sorry to say you we're completely wrong. These shellfish can help your organism indeed but in order to do this, they need to be uncooked and unprocessed.
In other words, if you want to get the most of these shellfish you have to eat them raw. But this is quite disgusting if you're not a seafood lover, isn't it? Fortunately, there's one more alternative to this first option.
We already saw green lipped mussel cooking is not recommended and we now know why things are like this. But what is the healthy alternative to cooked shellfish? The answer is dietary supplements made from these New Zealand mussels.
You may be unfamiliar with these products as they're generally recommended to people with arthritis and other rheumatoid or inflammatory diseases but individuals who're interested in improving their cardiovascular or respiratory function may also use these supplements.
Green lipped mussel extracts are very rich in nutrients - from vitamins and proteins to minerals, fatty acids and complex carbohydrates, so they're surely health efficient in people with nutritional deficiencies and low immunity levels as well. Then, scientific trials taken on these shellfish proved they're also useful for those with digestive ailments thanks to their gastro-protective properties.
While cooking green lipped mussel can actually turn these shellfish into a less digestible product, the supplements improve the functioning of the digestive system, heal the damaged lining of the stomach and protect it from new ulcerations and irritations which may occur during drug-based treatments.
So it's clear now why taking New Zealand shellfish supplements is more recommended than eating them cooked, but are these dietary products always safe and secure for absolutely anyone?
We said before green lipped mussel cooking or freezing can alter the ingredients in this seafood. But lots of brands manufacturing shellfish supplements use freeze-dried or frozen mussels to obtain the oil or powder. This means some dietary products are actually very poor in active principles so they don't really provide any health benefit.
Besides, there are numerous products obtained from New Zealand mussels which have lots of chemicals as secondary components. Again, their nutritional value is considerably diminished by these additional ingredients.
So if you want to make sure you avoid these potential drawbacks and get a really valuable, completely natural and healthy shellfish product, forget about green lipped mussel cooking and opt for a highly qualitative powder.