I don't know a thing about you, but I do know that many people like the taste of green lipped mussel cooking. So, it makes me wonder why there aren't more mussel recipes out there or even more ways to show to people who are conscious about healthy eating, how this nutritious type of shellfish can be incorporated as a part of our cuisine or diet.

Well, I can come up with two reasons why this is happening:

The first reason has to do with some simple facts. Green lipped mussels are not available fresh anywhere in the world but off the coasts of New Zealand.

What this means is if you don't live somewhere near the area where they are grown and harvested, it is impossible to obtain them fresh.

Of course, it is possible to obtain these mussels frozen, and indeed quantities of it are shipped from New Zealand to different parts of the world every year. So if you have acquired a taste for this delicacy, you can, in all probability, find it in some specialized stores in Canada, in the United States or the United Kingdom and many other parts of the world.

The second reason has to do with green lipped mussel cooking itself: The reason why you don't find that many recipes of mussels out there in the internet is because this type of shellfish loose most of their nutrients when cooked, and most people eat mussels for their incredible health benefits.

It kind of defeats the point of cooking in them in the first place, if in the process you lose out on most of the benefits that you were originally aiming for!

Of course you can make soup of it, you can have it roasted, there are all sorts of variations, but you will be certainly loosing out on a certain portion of their health benefits. However, even with this in mind, green lipped mussels are still an excellent source of protein, carbohydrates and omega 3 fatty acids.

Regardless whether it's cooked or raw, frozen or unfrozen, it still retains its protein and carbohydrate content, so it's an excellent food, and if you enjoy eating it, I would recommend including it in your diet.

Now, if you really want to go after all the health benefits that this wonderful type of shellfish can give you, then what you should consider is to buy them in a supplement form.

But beware, not all green lipped supplements are created equal. The fact is, there are a lot of supplements from a variety of brands available on the market and the task of selecting the most suitable of these can be quite daunting, if you don't know how to set them apart.

One piece of information that you should really try to get your hands on, either from the supplement brand manufacturers themselves or any other source, is the process technology that they employ (extraction and preservation of the mussels) in preparing the supplements.

It is a fact that freezing green lipped mussels destroys many of the bio active molecules, and more or less destroys most of the health benefits of the product. So does cooking, as I mentioned above.

In order to retain their product's maximum efficacy, what most manufacturers do is to freeze dry the green lipped mussels though an especially slow process. This slow process of freeze drying allows the bio active molecules to retain their effectiveness and also allows all the other ingredients of the green lipped mussel to function.

However, even this method is not the optimal one, because of two drawbacks: First, the mussels are exposed to high temperatures (above 80 Celsius) for a prolonged time, and second, this is an extremely slow process, resulting in degradation of the product until it is packaged.

Based on my research, there is one company in New Zealand called Xtend-Life which utilizes a proprietary, much more efficient freeze dry processing technology which eliminates these two drawbacks and ensures that green lipped mussels retain all their health enhancing nutrients all through the process.

Do yourself a favour and benefit from all the health advantages of green lipped mussels.