Soon you’ll be craving for brown seaweed because a substance in brown seaweed may help reduce abdominal fat. When chemistry professor Kazuo Miyashita and his colleagues at Hokkaido University in Japan fed obese mice this compound called fucoxanthin, the mice produced high levels of a protein involved in fat burning. The mice shed 2-5 percent of their body fat, mostly from the abdomen! Good news doesn’t stop there.

Fucoxanthin also increased the mice’s levels of DHA – an omega-3 fatty acid believed to promote brain and heart health – as effectively as fish-oil supplements. Brown seaweed is often added to Asian soups and salads but the fucoxanthin content is too low to cause significant weight loss, Miyashita says, so don’t go overdosing on brown seaweed now. So while you wait for Miyashita’s miraculous pill, don’t forget to eat healthy and exercise to keep belly fat at bay.