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Exploration of the Digital World Essay

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Exploration of the digital world My chosen research topic is the natural dietary supplement Spirulina. Spirulina is a simple one-celled microscopic blue-green algae with the scientific name of “Arthrospira platensis”. It is grown in tropical, high salt alkaline waters where there is strong sunlight and a pollution free environment. The algae is harvested and spray dried and presents in a powder form for further processing. By volume Spirulina has unusually high concentrations of proteins, vitamins & minerals when compared to other plant and animal based nutritional sources, for this reason Spirulina has attracted growing interest from the health and beauty industries. Researching A Small Cell With A Big Future I began researching my …show more content…

From the perspective of the body building industry, Spirulina is a very rich source of iron, magnesium and trace minerals, and many posters blog it’s the easiest Iron supplement for the body to absorb. With Iron being essential to build a strong immune system and healthy muscle tissue, body building communities are literally lapping it up in their protein shakes and singing it’s praises online, like, Frank Tortorici on YouTube Cross-Examination Of Social Media I began noticing a few inconsistencies with regard to how the Spirulina cells are actually grown, the varying health benefits and whether or not it is FDA approved or even regulated. With no real critical analysis of Spirulina during my research on my chosen two social media sites, I turned to informational sites to investigate further. The Australian Spirulina website is a Northern Territory company website set up to inform and also sell Spirulina products. In a matter of a few clicks around the page I discovered that the cells can only grow in salt water and not fresh water systems which was contrary claims made almost universally on YouTube & Twitter. I was also confronted with the many side effects of taking the supplement such as Thirst, constipation, skin irritations and dizziness to name a few, non of which were mentioned in any of the social media posts. I learned that Spirulina needs to be grown in a pollution free

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