López Santamarina, AroaCardelle Cobas, AlejandraMondragón Portocarrero, Alicia del CarmenCepeda Sáez, AlbertoMiranda López, José Manuel2025-10-212025-10-212025-06-01Food Chemistry Volume 476, 1 June 2025, 1434370308-8146https://hdl.handle.net/10347/43301This work investigated the nutritional and mineral composition of three red seaweed species, Palmaria palmata, Porphyra umbilicalis and Chondrus crispus, and an in vitro assay was performed to determinate the effects of the intake of whole red seaweed on gut microbiota, short chain fatty acids production and metabolic pathways. The results obtained showed that 100 g of seaweeds contained essential minerals such as 28–107 % daily needs of Ca, 183–600 % daily needs of Fe and 18–54 % daily needs of Zn, whereas low content were found for Cu and I. Seaweed digestion fermentation showed beneficial effects of gut microbiota, as increases in beneficial species such as Akkermansia muciniphila, and in some seaweed, Bifidobacterium adoslescentis, Bacteroides ovatus or Lactobacillus ruminis. Metabolic pathways did only found little significant differences with respect to inulin fermentation. In view of the results, red seaweed showed prebiotic effects on human gut microbiota.eng© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/).Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Red seaweedGut microbiotaShort chain fatty acidsMetabolic pathwaysDietary fiberPolysaccharidesjournal article10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.143437open access