Three and a half billion years ago, a photosynthetic organism first converted carbon dioxide in the air into oxygen; the organism was called cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae.
The blue-green algae, spirulina, was discovered by Dr. Clement of the Institute of French Petroleum (IFP) in 1962. She was very interested in the surprisingly strong and healthy people of the Kanembu tribe at Lake Chad (salt water lake) in Africa; although they lived in a a very simple environment without many farms or wild animals, fish, or grain crops as food sources, the stature of the people living there was much better than the modernized population. Further investigation found that the Kanembu tribe often gathered the blue-green algae floating on the lake surface, dried it under the sun and mixed it in buns or cooked it in soup. The blue-green algae was spirulina.
From the aspect of nutrition, spirulina contains phycocyanin; when it is soaked in clear water, a beautiful blue color appears. So, it is also called blue algae. From the shape of the algae, it appears as a spiral under the microscope; hence, it is also called spiral algae.