# Carrageenan > Carrageenan is neither an essential nutrient nor is it even used by our bodies - it is a harmful carcinogen that is derived from red seaweed and used as a food additive for thickening, stabilizing, texturizing, and emulsifying. ## Not All Seaweed Is Harmful While red seaweed contains carrageenan, nori (the green-coloured seaweed used in sushi, sometimes called dried purple laver) and agar agar do not contain carrageenan. And there are a variety of benefits of consuming nori and agar agar. Nori, for example contains vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and K, as well as other nutrients, including iron, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese, phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, and taurine. ## Harmful Carrageenan Carrageenan is harmful to human health. It can cause cancer, heart diseases, neurological disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, and other digestive issues.\ \ However, research has been insufficient to fight against the lobbying that keeps it legal. Nonetheless, researchers strongly urge for the government to ban it.\ "Degraded carrageenan, also known as poligeenan, is a proven carcinogen \[...] researchers have found poligeenan labelled as carrageenan in some products. In some of them, it was as much as 25 percent."\ \ \ "the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1982 identified sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of degraded carrageenan in animals to regard it as posing a carcinogenic risk to humans \[...] exposure to undegraded as well as to degraded carrageenan was associated with the occurrence of intestinal ulcerations and neoplasms"\ --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://veganvigil.gitbook.io/overview/nutrition/nutrients/harmful/carrageenan.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.