Coming specifically from hemp seeds (duh), hempseed oil is commonly confused with its uber-popular counterpart, CBD oil. While CBD oil is a health powerhouse in its own right, hemp seed oil also carries with it plenty of health benefits. It has a rich nutrient profile, lots of good fats and fatty acids and carries a wide range of nutrients. Hempseed oil can help skin health, inflammation, brain & hearth health. Hemp seed oil is a worthy addition into anyone’s diet.

You may know that CBD oil extraction involves complicated machines that use different solvents such as C02. We thought you’d want to know how making hemp seed oil compares. Below we’ll outline how hemp seeds are commonly extracted and even how you can make your own oil at home!

MAKING HEMP SEED OIL: THE TRADITIONAL METHOD

All seed oils are extracted with an oilseed press machine, and hemp seeds are no different. Used for edible and industrial oils, the oilseed press machine is a trusty & sturdy machine for oil extraction. Seed press machines usually come in two distinct types: a traditional screw press or a reducing screw design.

A lot of variables go into the specific pressing of different seeds, but the main concept stays the same. First you dispense raw seeds into the seed hopper, then an expeller screw crushes the seeds. Next, the oils run through canals where the pulp gets separated from the oil.

The oil produced from this method is pure, raw and as unprocessed as modern technology can get. And this is the basic & traditional method of extracting oils from seeds. This basic method and machinery are used for all kinds of seeds and even nuts. Oils from peanuts, sesame seeds and of course hemp seeds are extracted by this method.

MAKING SEED OILS IS MORE COMPLEX THAN IT SEEMS

While the traditional hemp oil press method seems simplistic, it’s actually surprisingly complex. Many variables go into seed pressing that can make or break a batch of oil.

Let’s take seed moisture content for an example. If a seed is stored incorrectly and it harbors a higher-than-normal moisture content, then it will not press well. This is because if a seed is pressed with too much moisture, the moisture will actually tie up the oil within the seeds. Problems arise with moisture levels that are too low as well. That will increase the pressing temperatures, leading to lesser oil production and potentially going above the temperature limit for “cold-pressed” oils (120°F). Even something as simple as storage can impact the way the seeds interact with the press machines, which is why it’s important for manufacturers to pay attention to every part of the process.

Seed quality is another important characteristic. Non-ripe seeds produce different quality oils and smells than ripe seeds. And obviously seeds that are moldy and improperly stored will produce low-quality oil. The actual operation of the seed press is important too, as the settings for the machine greatly affect the pressing method and pressing temperature. An operator must know how to manipulate the distance between the press head and the screw end, the speed of the press, the tip size and the type of screw needed for the seed. This is why having a well-experienced seed press machine operator is important for companies looking to produce quality hempseed oil products.

WHAT IS COLD-PRESSED OIL?

The reason a “cold-pressed” oil is preferred over others (even though it produces less oil) is that it tends to keep more of the characteristics and benefits of the seed in the final oil.

Cold pressing also produces lower phosphorous levels. phosphorous is the culprit for the “green” and “grassy” flavors of some oils. If this is something you dislike, then cold-pressed oils are for you.

Heat and the distinctive characteristics of the oil it produces affects the quality of CBD oil too. Most CBD extraction methods require heating and pressurizing chemicals to supercritical temperatures. If you want an oil that keeps the majority of the plant’s original characteristics and fats without the ‘grassy’ taste, then cold pressed oil might be a good match.

MAKING HEMP SEED OIL AT HOME

If you’re like us, you can’t afford to buy an industrial scale oil press machine. You might still want to experiment with making your own CBD oil. If so, we suggest you purchase a hand crank oil press. Not only can you make hemp seed oil, but you can press any type of seed or nut that you want.

Making hemp seed oil on a hand crank seed press is easy. First, set up the press on a flat, secure surface. Next, you’ll fill the attached oil lamp and light it for 10 minutes prior to operation. This warms up the crank and ensures the oil separates. Then, simply put seeds into the hopper and crank away!

That’s the basics of how to make hemp seed oil. We hope that the next time you see seed oils in the store, that you have a little bit more appreciation for all the hard work and precision that goes into making them.

The post Making Hemp Seed Oil: A Simple Guide To How It’s Made appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode, Matt looks at how to add hemp seeds to your daily diet with help from Ministry of Hemp’s video producer Jessica St. Cyr and writer Elijah Pickering.

Then Matt and his wife Kacie head to one of Omaha’s favorite cocktail bars, Herbe Sainte, for CBD cocktails prepared with care and style by Bar Manager Austin Elsberry.

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

Read more articles on hemp food and drink:

• Hemp for breakfast
• How To Make Your Own Hemp Milk
• CBD Drinks & Cocktails

Below you’ll find the full written transcript of episode #2.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt: 00:04 Hey this is Matt with the Ministry of Hemp podcast welcoming you to episode two.

Matt: 00:10 Now today you might notice I sound a little bit different because we’re going to be talking about hemp in food. So it only seems right to maybe start this show in my kitchen. And that’s where we are.

Matt: 00:21 I’m here with my sous chef, a little black pug named Mable and we are making a hemp scramble for breakfast. It’s Sunday morning, super cold outside and I’m putting off shoveling. So why not make a protein packed scramble with some CBD goodness, to get the day started?

Matt: 00:39 So we’re starting with a shallot. If you don’t know what a shallot is, a shallot is like an onion, times two. They’re amazing. They’re purple. I’m going to use half of one because I’m only making food for me today. Although, this little pug tends to get a little bit every time too.

Matt: 00:54 From there, got some spinach that we’re going to chop up. This is a scramble so we’ve got some fresh, washed spinach. I’ve got some green onions. And I’m just going to rough chop this spinach. Do sort of a rough chop on the shallots as well. I like having big pieces of shallots in there.

Matt: 01:20 Always wash your spinach. Even if you wash it when you first bought it, wash it again. It’s just a safe thing to do.

Matt: 01:26 From there, I’m going to crack our eggs. Using three of them. Crack your egg on a flat surface, that’s going to prevent you from getting shells into your scrambled eggs.

Matt: 01:42 And then another little trick I learned back when I was working in a hotel. You know how hotel eggs are always yellow and fluffy and huge? The trick is fat. So we are going to add just about a tablespoon of sour cream into our eggs. And then from there, we’re going to whip them up real good. And this is an important step because not only are we whipping the sour cream into the eggs, whipping air into the eggs too. And that’s what’s going to make them fluffy.

Matt: 02:17 Get them good and whipped. The sour cream isn’t going to completely break down in there, but you will see it start to mix with the eggs real well. Just about ready here. I’m going to put a pinch of salt directly into the eggs.

Matt: 02:42 And now we’re going to get into the action. So now, we head over to the stove. And this is where the hemp oil comes in. If you’re making eggs traditionally, you need butter. I’m using one tablespoon of melted butter. I’ve got my pan on the heat, just about medium. You don’t want to go too hot.

Matt: 02:59 And because I am using full spectrum hemp oil, this one is from Populum, and it’s got a little bit of orange zest to it. But I don’t think that’s going cause any issues here.

Matt: 03:12 I am going ahead, and use half a dropper and combine it with my melted butter.

Matt: 03:21 And because the two are oils, the CBD oil’s going to join with the fat, cling to it nicely. From there, as soon as our pan is warm enough, shallots go in first. You want to make sure your pan is hot, but not too hot. We’re trying to cook the eggs, not overcook the eggs, right?

Matt: 03:41 Then I’m really getting little bit of that orange coming off of that CBD oil. Really nice as it heats up.

Matt: 03:46 Now you will want to be careful. I think the orange in this one is light enough that it’s not going to make a big issue, but you might not want to do anything too heavily flavored. Maybe even a neutral flavored one.

Matt: 03:55 Let’s go. Shallots in the pan. And as you can hear, not a screaming sizzle. Just a nice soft sizzle. Shallots are going to cook faster than onions. Keep that in mind. And they will brown up on you. So I’m going to go another tiny little sprinkle of salt in the shallots, because that helps pull the liquid out of them with the heat. Get some flavor on there.

Matt: 04:28 Now while those soften up, like I was telling you, we’re going to talk about hemp and food today. And just sort of explain some easy ways that you can add hemp to your daily diet.

Matt: 04:37 I got to thinking about this after our first episode when Kit, from Ministry of Hemp, posted something about hummus in a grocery store. And it was CBD infused hummus which, cool. I’m really glad that CBD is being infused into foods but the problem with this one is there was only three milligrams of CBD in the entire container. Now I’m not going to call out any companies, but that seems by no means a dosage that’s going to do anything, for anyone.

Matt: 05:06 But you know what it will do? It will raise the price of that hummus. This is the thing. As CBD’s introduced into our foods, we need to be conscious of how that is happening. Now, the scramble that I’m making right now? I know exactly what I’ve put into it. I know that I can trust Populum, I’ve dealt with them before. I know it’s a CBD oil I like. And I know that I am putting an amount in that will have an effect on me.

Matt: 05:27 So read your labels. We don’t need CBD to turn into another organic farming kick where we right a word on a package and suddenly we can sell eggs and vegetables and grains for five times the price. That’s not going to help anybody.

Matt: 05:43 So what we’re going to talk about today is way that you can easily incorporate hemp into your meals.

Matt: 05:51 Know what you’re putting in there and know that you’re doing yourself a favor, not just paying extra. In go the eggs.

Matt: 06:01 And the rule for scrambled eggs is done in the pan, over done on the plate. So I’m going to cook mine just a little runny. I introduced them first and I just let them sit. From there, my spinach is going to go in. And again, I’m just going to let it mellow here for a second while the eggs start to come together.

Matt: 06:23 Today on the show we are going to talk to Jessica, one of our videographers, and she is going to tell us how to make hemp milk at home. Then I’m going to talk to another one of our writers, Elijah, who’s written some great stuff about hemp seeds and the way you can use that in your food. And then from there, my wife Cassie and I are going to go to the bar, try some hemp cocktails with a good friend of mine. It’s all happening here on the second episode of The Ministry of Hemp podcast.

Matt: 06:48 But first, just like that, I have got a hemp infused scramble with shallots and fresh spinach. Of course, no eggs are any good without a little bit of fresh cracked, black pepper. And now it’s time for breakfast.

Matt: 07:16 Okay. Breakfast is over. I’m feeling the effects of the CBD, which is good because I’m an old man and I hurt my back shoveling yesterday. Yea winter.

Matt: 07:24 In this episode we’re really going to focus on two different ways to introduce hemp into our meal. And that is hemp oil, CBD, which we just talked about in scramble. And hemp seeds, or hemp hearts, which are the whole seed itself. Both of which are available most places and completely legal right now. Now the good news is the FDA passed some, well didn’t pass legislation but started talking about how they want to pass legislation soon. And I’ll get to that in a further episode when we talk about legality, efficacy and what’s coming.

Matt: 07:56 But in this episode, we’re going to focus on what you can get your hands on right now. Hemp seed and hemp oil. And let’s get started and learn to make some hemp milk with a little help from Ministry of Hemp’s very own videographer, Jessica St. Cyr who is going to teach us how to make hemp milk.

Matt: 08:17 So Jessica, I watched a video of you just the other day and you made hemp milk. This is something that I have not encountered. I’ve seen oat milk, I’ve seen almond milk, like we’re not supposed to drink it because it’s bad for the environment, I guess. And like soy milk is on its way out now as well because it curdles in your coffee and it’s gross. You know?

Jessica: 08:39 I’ve never liked soy milk.

Matt: 08:40 See, I like soy milk! I actually grew to like it. But I can’t put it in my coffee. And I need just a little something. So I’ve switched to like this oat milk, I don’t even know if it’s milk technically at this point. But it’s an oat beverage. And it doesn’t seem to curdle. And it tastes pretty good.

Matt: 08:55 Tell me about hemp milk. What’s the difference? Why should I change to hemp milk?

Jessica: 09:00 Honestly, that’s really hard to answer. I like a variety of different kinds of milk. I think because hemp milk in itself is full of omega-3’s and omega-6’s and lots of good vitamins and minerals and it’s just really easy to make at home.

Jessica: 09:17 You can make it with two ingredients and in like, two minutes.

Matt: 09:23 And what are the ingredients? How does that work?

Jessica: 09:24 You just need some hemp hearts. So the hulled hemp seeds and some water. And just a little bit of salt. If you want it to be sweet, you can have sweetener. But really you just need hemp hearts and water.

Matt: 09:41 Okay. And hemp hearts are technically hulled hemp seeds, right?

Jessica: 09:46 Yes.

Matt: 09:47 Okay because when I first saw the thing I was like, hemp milk? And I went to culinary school for four years. I was a chef and what not. And my head went straight to, she’s going to put leaves into a blender with something and make milk out of it. How is it not green? You know?

Jessica: 10:00 Yeah.

Matt: 10:00 Which is just idiotic I guess.

Jessica: 10:06 You can get them unhulled, but you just have to soak them.

Matt: 10:10 Got it.

Jessica: 10:10 Like beans, you know?

Matt: 10:13 Fair enough. And do you strain the milk afterwards? Is it gritty?

Jessica: 10:19 You can strain it if you prefer a smoother beverage. It’s not necessary. When you don’t strain it there’s a tiny bit of sediment at the bottom. I, personally, don’t mind it. It really just comes down to a personal preference.

Matt: 10:34 Sure.

Jessica: 10:35 I don’t mind it. Sometimes I do, you know I don’t want a gritty kind of milk. It’s really not that bad but you can strain it through a cheese cloth or nut milk bag if you want.

Matt: 10:47 And it’s full of like protein and you said Omega-3, fatty acids. I mean obviously you’re not going to get calcium from this. It’s not going to do that.

Jessica: 10:57 Yeah, no. But it does have a lot of things that other seed and nut milk do not have. The hemp seed itself is the only natural seed that makes linoleic acid. I think that’s how you say it.

Matt: 11:10 I think you pronounced it really well. I’ve tried to say it several times, and I did it as lo-lana-nano-lite.

Jessica: 11:16 But because it’s naturally producing, it’s a really good source of all of those really important things that we all need.

Matt: 11:27 And again, we’re not over-watering almond trees to make almond milk and using up aquifers. And we’re not over processing soy beans and growing too much soy. Like, hemp is plentiful. It grows really easy and the seeds, I assume, are probably pretty cheap.

Jessica: 11:43 Yeah. It’s honestly a really sustainable option. I feel like it’s definitely a much better option for the environment than some other types of nut milks. You know, like almond milk, I actually didn’t know that and now I’m going to go look into it, after I’ve talked to you.

Matt: 12:00 Oh yeah. Okay. Well here, I’ll teach you something. I drank almond milk for a while. And I had a buddy that was actually, that lived out in California and railed against almond farming and almond milk. Because, it takes a crap load of almonds to make almond milk. And almond trees use a ton of water and they’re growing them in California where there’s a lot of drought and water issues. And so very rich farms are using all the water for almonds and almond milk. And the almond people are like, “No, no, no, that’s not true!” But it absolutely is!

Matt: 12:34 So I won’t say don’t drink it-

Jessica: 12:39 Wow, that’s crazy!

Matt: 12:39 Yeah it’s not great for the environment and it’s not as renewable as you think either, you know?

Jessica: 12:43 Yeah. I do not drink almond milk and I will not start.

Matt: 12:47 Okay. I’m not judging you if you do. And I admit, I put a little bit of almond milk in my coffee this morning because we didn’t have soy at work. So. I’m ready to switch to hemp milk though!

Matt: 12:55 Okay. So you said that hemp milk is actually pretty expensive

Matt: 13:00 And making it’s pretty cheap. How much is a gallon of hemp milk if I go to Trader Joe’s?

Jessica: 13:04 I’ve never seen it in a gallon, but you know the little cardboard containers that the nut milks come in, different brands I’ve seen it for even $5.

Matt: 13:14 Oh, wow.

Jessica: 13:15 Which is crazy, right?

Matt: 13:17 Yeah.

Jessica: 13:18 That’s so expensive. And I mean, for a cup of hemp milk with one cup of the hemp hearts. So, seems a lot more economical for sure.

Matt: 13:32 Yeah. This goes back to part of the theme of this episode where I’m doing hemp in food and hemp in drinks. And it seems like, we could be right on the edge of creating another organic fad, where we start putting organic on food and it just magically becomes more expensive. And people start to think badly about organic farming and organic foods, which they shouldn’t. But, the marketing of it can easily take something … Like, you and I saw that article about the hummus that has 13 milligrams-

Jessica: 14:05 Three milligrams-

Matt: 14:06 Yeah, something-

Jessica: 14:06 … or something.

Matt: 14:07 … ridiculous. And I guarantee, that hummus cost seven or eight bucks because they say, “Yeah, we waved CBD over it,” or whatever. And I worry about that, in a situation like this, especially when you said, two, three ingredients, four, if you wanna season it, and they literally cost nothing. So, it’s something to watch for and worry about, really at this point, especially when we’re trying to encourage this.

Jessica: 14:28 I mean, that is something that happens with every industry, and I don’t think it’s ever gonna stop happening. I mean, everything has … it’s like the buzzword right now, hemp, or CBD, so people are just trying to turn a profit because of capitalism.

Matt: 14:49 Exactly. Yeah. I mean, like CBD water and whatnot. And it’s like, you can get Aquafina-

Jessica: 14:54 CBD water.

Matt: 14:54 … which is already overpriced like tap water from London basically. And you add a little CBD to it, and I mean, a trace amount that doesn’t do anything and, “We can sell that same six pack for $10.” It’s scary, but-

Jessica: 15:10 I think that’s where, just the education really comes in to really research what you’re buying.

Matt: 15:18 Yes.

Jessica: 15:19 Even if it’s just a little search, do something. Don’t just pay a bunch of money for something.

Matt: 15:25 No, absolutely. Especially when you can make it at home and it is so easy. And again, there’s a great video on ministryofhemp.com, and you can see Jessica whipping it up and it’s literally nothing. It takes, maybe, 30 seconds to do it all, and maybe another minute if you wanna strain it. Why not just make it at home?

Jessica: 15:43 Yeah. It’s super easy. And honestly, take it from me, when it comes to making things at home … I have my groceries delivered to me. I am not a cooker. This is seriously so easy.

Matt: 15:57 The term cooker gives it away, right? Jessica, you have been wonderful. Thank you-

Jessica: 16:03 I’m not in the-

Matt: 16:04 … so much.

Jessica: 16:06 Thanks for having me.

Matt: 16:06 Yeah. This was great. I really appreciate it. You can find Jessica’s recipe and process for making hemp milk right over at ministryofhemp.com. And guys, it really is easy. Next up, I sat down with Elijah Pickering, who also writes for ministryofhemp.com. He writes about food for the site. And Elijah had some other ideas of what you could do with those hemp seeds. Speaking of which, I found hemp seeds right here in Omaha, Nebraska at Whole Foods, but then I found them a little cheaper at Trader Joe’s, too. So, why do I want hemp in my diet? What is the benefit of having hemp in a daily or weekly diet?

Elijah: 17:03 So, the benefit of having hemp is not only does it have the nutritional, it’s a super food basically. It’s extremely high in plant-based protein. It has anti-inflammatory qualities. And it just has a myriad of different things as well. And the easiest thing with it too is how I incorporate it into foods, which I’m sure we’re gonna get into in a little bit. But yeah, it’s extremely nutrient-dense, it’s easy to incorporate into your foods, and it’s fairly available to find as well.

Matt: 17:40 And pretty inexpensive, as far as I can tell, too. If you’re buying hemp hearts, which are called hemp seeds, they’re not expensive at all. And you can do all kinds of stuff with them.

Elijah: 17:49 Not really, yeah. If you go to Myer in the baking section is where the hemp hearts are, I usually get hemp hearts, flax seed, and chia seeds, and they’re each what, two and a half, $3, and they last you a long time as well.

Matt: 18:05 And you treat the hemp hearts the same way that you sort of treat the flax and the chia, in the same type usage?

Elijah: 18:11 Mm-hmm. What I usually do is I mix all three. So, it’s like a super grain type mixture that I can just sprinkle on anything. Yeah. I mean, you just use it the same way you would use sesame seeds, sprinkling on top of salads, on top of rice bowls. I put it in my protein smoothies and things like that.

Matt: 18:32 So, you’re basically adding protein. You’re adding a ton of fiber, really good for you. And then, you’re adding all manner of anti-inflammatories. What was the other? Lina, I can never say it, linoleic, linoloic acid, is that right?

Elijah: 18:47 No.

Matt: 18:52 I can’t remember it.

Elijah: 18:52 Yeah, I can’t remember that either. And it also has all that essential amino acids as well that your body doesn’t produce, so that’s really important to get into those as well. The main part is, it’s extremely good for you. It’s extremely nutritious. And the only thing it can do is help you. Yeah.

Matt: 19:12 Sure. So, take me through it. Let’s start with breakfast, for example. I wanna introduce hemp into my breakfast, what am I doing?

Elijah: 19:19 So, if you want to put it in your breakfast, for me, I don’t start eating until 2:00 PM, ’cause I do intermittent fasting. But, if you were to do it into breakfast, something that I eat a lot is oatmeal, right? That’s something that people eat for breakfast. So, you just make your normal oatmeal. Try to use good oatmeal, good milk, put good things in it, lots of fruits. I’ll take the hemp hearts and I’ll put those just right on top, directly.

Matt: 19:48 Just directly on top? Is it gonna add crunch? Do they soften up at all? I mean, what’s it like in your mouth?

Elijah: 19:53 It adds a little bit of a nuttiness taste, but it depends on how much you put on. I really put probably, a tablespoon and a half worth of hemp hearts on top of my oatmeal. And I put brown sugar, blueberries, strawberries in it too, so it’s like a mixture.

Matt: 20:14 That sounds great.

Elijah: 20:15 So, yeah, it blends right into it.

Matt: 20:20 So, just directly on top though? You’re not worrying about heating it up with the water or anything like the steel cut oats, for example, you wanna soften those up.

Elijah: 20:26 Nope.

Matt: 20:26 This just goes right on top like grape nuts almost?

Elijah: 20:29 Yeah, yep.

Matt: 20:29 Cool.

Elijah: 20:30 Sprinkle it right on top.

Matt: 20:31 So, I would assume you could do the same thing with, say, a salad for lunch? I mean, just sprinkle it right on top and you’ll add-

Elijah: 20:38 That’s exactly what I do. Yep.

Matt: 20:39 … add some texture-

Elijah: 20:40 That’s what I like, too. Yep, adds texture. I’ll just get my three greens mix. I’ll cook up a thing of salmon, ’cause I really like Salmon-

Matt: 20:53 I do, too.

Elijah: 20:54 … put that there. I put almonds there for the fat in them, then I’ll put the hemp hearts, then I’ll put my dressing, and then, sometimes I put a little bit of hot sauce just to add a little zing to it as well. So, it’s super easy. I mean, I’m in college, so-

Matt: 21:13 And so, you’re poor?

Elijah: 21:13 … I’m not … Yeah, I’m not always motivated to do meal prepping and do that every day, so salads are super easy, oatmeal’s super easy.

Matt: 21:25 Sure. Speaking of salmon, I’m thinking, if you took your salmon and then you did a mustard rub on it, and then encrusted it with hemp seeds and seared those on there, you would add an amazing crunch to it.

Elijah: 21:38 That would be awesome, actually. Yeah.

Matt: 21:40 That would be fantastic. I was just gonna say, what should we do for dinner? There it is.

Elijah: 21:45 I mean, that could work. I mean, my favorite part of the fish … Also, I mean, a little biased ’cause I come from the Philippians, so I’ve been eating a lot of fish all my life is the crunchy skin, that’s my favorite part.

Matt: 21:56 Yeah, man. Absolutely. Definitely. I’m gonna have to try that on salmon, that sounds wonderful. So now, I saw you had some articles about protein shakes and whatnot. You had one about milk, and I actually talked to Jessica and she went through making hemp milk with me. When you’re doing it in a protein shake, are you literally just buzzing it up?

Elijah: 22:15 Yeah. I just put it right on there just like when I put it on my oatmeals and things, so it’s the same exact thing.

Matt: 22:22 And it’s adding protein just like if you were adding walnuts, or flax, or anything else to it but actually, probably cheaper. And since it comes from hemp, a little better for the environment, too.

Elijah: 22:34 Yep. And I also have a … My mom actually bought me this hemp protein thing she got from the store and it’s like a protein powder but it’s from hemp.

Matt: 22:46 Really?

Elijah: 22:47 So, it’s all plant-based protein, so-

Matt: 22:49 That’s fantastic.

Elijah: 22:50 … I’ve been using that.

Matt: 22:51 So, as far as baking, you would do it the same way? Just introduce it directly into your flour, like if you were making muffins or making bread or something like that? You can literally just introduce the hemp seeds or the hearts, if you will, into the flour and bake as normal and you’ve got a seeded bread with plant protein in it instead of just wheat proteins?

Elijah: 23:11 Mm-hmm. You could do that. And then, also, if you have hemp milk on hand, anything that needs milk, you can use that and that’s already incorporated into it. And heart hemp milk, excuse me, is actually really good. I prefer it over almond milk, which is what I usually get.

Matt: 23:27 I’ve gotta try it. See, I live in Nebraska and there’s not a lot of hemp stuff here yet. So, I’m gonna make some hemp milk. I’m really interested.

Elijah: 23:34 Yeah, it is really good. I put a little … I remember when I made it, I made it with some pitted dates that were crushed up and some really nice Brazilian honey that I have, and it was really good. And it was just like a slight sweetness to it, and then you’re getting that nuttiness with the hemp hearts as well. And it’s just like a nice clean milk, too. It’s not zero percent fat milk, but it’s like 2% really, it’s a little bit thinner and not thick.

Matt: 24:05 But, it’s also a plant-based protein fat you’re getting. You’re not getting dairy fats?

Elijah: 24:11 Nope. Yep. It’s straight from the plant, no cow. It did not come from a cow.

Matt: 24:16 Yeah. They’re not milking hemp milk out of cows, huh?

Elijah: 24:19 No.

Matt: 24:20 So, what is your favorite thing to eat with hemp, to introduce hemp into if you had to pick one thing?

Elijah: 24:28 Well, one of my favorite things is, I already mentioned it, is oatmeal. I eat oatmeal pretty much every day. It’s an extremely … I mean, oatmeal within itself, I mentioned it in one of my past articles, in terms of the grain of it is again, also highly nutrient-dense, lots of carbohydrates, lots of protein, and lots of calories for a small amount as well. So, I mean, eating that pretty much every day is the best for me. And really, the best use of it is something that you’ll actually use every day.

Matt: 25:05 Sure. Sure.

Elijah: 25:06 For me, that’s the best hemp or that’s the best CBD product or that’s the best hemp product for anyone is which ever one you’re gonna use every day consistently.

Matt: 25:16 Yeah. Don’t fret over it, just make it as easy as possible, so you can introduce it into your daily routine.

Elijah: 25:24 I mean, really it’s the lowest effort thing you can do. You’re sprinkling hemp hearts over it-

Matt: 25:29 Totally.

Elijah: 25:30 … on top of something. If you can’t do that, then I don’t know what to say there.

Matt: 25:35 Yeah, you shouldn’t be cooking anything. Well, I tell you what, next time I’m in Michigan I’m gonna come by and I’m gonna sear up some salmon with some hemp for you and we’ll have a meal. How’s that sound?

Elijah: 25:42 Let’s do it. My roommate-

Matt: 25:43 I’ll treat you.

Elijah: 25:44 … and I-

Matt: 25:44 I’ll take care of you. Eli, thanks for your time, man. This was great. I really appreciate the info.

Elijah: 25:50 Okay, yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Matt.

Matt: 25:53 Yeah.

Matt: 26:02 You can check out Ellijah’s work at ministryofhemp.com and find all kind of delicious recipes including his amazing and super health oatmeal.

Matt: 26:11 Right now why don’t we switch gears back to CBD. Folks I think it’s time for some cocktails.

Matt: 26:22 There’s some great videos on ministryofhemp.com and plenty of other sites too that show bartenders, I’m not gonna use the word mixologist ’cause I kinda can’t stand it, making drinks with CBD, infusing it into their drinks. And not just for flavor, for a whole different cocktail experience. Now I’d grab my wife who went kicking and screaming I’m sure you can imagine down to a bar called Herbe Sainte where a good friend of ours, Austin, treated us to some CBD infused cocktails.

Austin: 26:51 Hi, my name’s Austin Elsberry. I’m the bar manager here at Herbe Sainte. So yeah, I run the bar program here, come up with the cocktail menu.

Matt: 26:59 And you’re gonna be helping us with some CBD infused cocktails.

Austin: 27:03 Yes I am.

Matt: 27:04 Can you give us a brief description of the cocktails that we taste?

Austin: 27:07 All right first cocktail up today is going to be one that’s on our menu right now called 75 Problems. Every menu that we’ve put put so far I’ve always got some sort of French 75 inspired variant on there.

Matt: 27:19 Gotcha and a little Jay-Z inspiration.

Austin: 27:21 Yes indeed. The full title of this one, 75 Problems but Gin Ain’t One. This is a tequila based French 75 style drink. Tequila, some Tattersall blueberry liqueur, lime juice, a little bit of Ancho Reyes which is an ancho chile liqueur as well.

Matt: 27:40 Oh my.

Austin: 27:40 Gives it a nice little darkness in there, a hint of spice.

Matt: 27:46 And now we’ve got a lemon-lime CBD that is made by Savage. It is their essentials. And then we’ve also got a Populum full spectrum hemp oil. Which one would you recommend for this first one?

Austin: 28:01 For this drink I’m gonna go with the full spectrum. Having tasted them both I think that orange oil in there is gonna work really nicely with this darker blueberry ancho chile thing going on.

Matt: 28:13 Cool. Let’s do it.

Austin: 28:15 Absolutely here we go.

Matt: 28:15 Whip it up, walk us through it.

Austin: 28:16 This is a cocktail that I’ve got the liquor in it already batched so I just have to pour one thing instead of three or four. Just a little bit of lime juice, we tried it with more and I had to back it way down because it was just a little too tart.

Matt: 28:31 Gotcha.

Austin: 28:31 And so here gonna do maybe a third of a dropper of the oil. Ends up being about seven or eight drops. See how this turns out.

Matt: 28:43 I should mention my wife Casey is here tasting with me.

Austin: 28:46 Hi Casey.

Casey: 28:46 Hi.

Austin: 28:52 All right so shaken that in a tin over ice. Strain it out into a champagne flute.

Casey: 29:01 Oh that’s fancy.

Austin: 29:01 In true French 75 style.

Matt: 29:03 Of course. It’s bright red.

Austin: 29:09 Yeah that blueberry liqueur is really vibrant. And then we’re topping that one with just a little bit of sparkling wine, whatever you like.

Matt: 29:17 And what did you use here?

Austin: 29:18 I’ve got, well known to bartenders everywhere, Wycliff. It’s a brut California sparkling wine. Just floating a lime wheel in the cocktail.

Matt: 29:29 I should say that it is shaved razor thin.

Casey: 29:31 Yeah. I was gonna say that’s the thinnest lime I’ve even seen.

Austin: 29:33 I did those this morning.

Matt: 29:35 Oh man, I was gonna say, who’s the poor jerk that has to do that? It’s you.

Austin: 29:37 Yep, it’s me.

Casey: 29:38 Oh that’s beautiful.

Austin: 29:40 The curse of having a relatively steady hand. And this is lovely, I can actually see the oil in the drink.

Matt: 29:46 Oh really?

Austin: 29:48 Because I shook the cocktail, whips it around in there …

Matt: 29:52 Is that around the rim basically, is that where that …

Austin: 29:54 Yeah, actually if you look in there, over the top, you can see those little bubbles around the edge of the lime, outside of it.

Matt: 30:01 Oh yeah.

Casey: 30:01 Oh yeah, that’s cool.

Austin: 30:03 It almost looks like a little bit of-

Casey: 30:05 It looks like olive oil.

Austin: 30:05 … really fine edible glitter or something.

Matt: 30:07 Really, it does, it’s really pretty. Ladies first.

Casey: 30:09 Yeah, for sure. I like that little bit of science there. Yeah, that’s super delicious.

Matt: 30:16 Oh hell. Yeah, that tastes like you’re doing yourself a favor for breakfast right there.

Casey: 30:21 That’s a great brunch drink for sure.

Matt: 30:22 Oh my God, that’s lovely. Well done sir. And you’re right, it does look so pretty as the oil catches the light. Look at that.

Casey: 30:30 Kinda reminds me when you finish a dish and you put olive oil on top-

Austin: 30:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. For some reason I thought it might be oily feel in your mouth, but not at all.

Matt: 30:41 Yeah, and that’s what I was wondering about to see if that would come through. What is the title of our next drink?

Austin: 30:46 The next drink is Spelling Contest. I had this on one of our summer menus a year or two ago, I can’t remember, two years ago, summer. I was playing around just trying to make some syrups and I was like I want to do something herbal. Let’s make a sage syrup. What do I want to do with that? I need a rye cocktail, I need a rye whiskey cocktail. With this one, nice light, refreshing rye cocktail with that little bit of herbal from the sage syrup. So what we’ve go here, and I’m actually building this one from scratch since it hasn’t been on the menu in a while. I’ve got an ounce and a half of Old Overholt rye. Then half an ounce each of lime juice, Aperol-

Casey: 31:28 Oh I love Aperol.

Matt: 31:28 I do too.

Casey: 31:31 Underrated in my opinion.

Matt: 31:31 You’re a big Aperol spritz girl.

Casey: 31:31 I love Aperol spritzers.

Austin: 31:33 And then half an ounce of a sage syrup.

Casey: 31:42 Oh yum, I love sage too.

Austin: 31:45 And to this one I’m gonna do … which one is this?

Matt: 31:48 That’s the Savage.

Austin: 31:49 Then the Savage lemon-lime. Same deal, using about a third to a half of a dropper.

Matt: 31:58 So about eight drops.

Austin: 31:59 About eight drops.

Casey: 32:02 I feel like that was 12 but whatever you guys. I’m just kidding, I’m kidding.

Austin: 32:04 It’s gonna be fun. We’re just gonna have a great time.

Matt: 32:10 That’s the good thing about CBD, it’s just gonna mellow us out a little bit.

Casey: 32:10 Yeah, sit here, all my aches and pains will go away. And get drunk.

Austin: 32:16 And once again this is a shaken cocktail.

Matt: 32:17 Got the one handed shake.

Austin: 32:24 All right.

Casey: 32:26 That’s beautiful too. Both of these have been really pretty colors. Just not that that’s important at all.

Matt: 32:32 You get the sheen of the oil all along the top. It’s really pretty.

Austin: 32:36 Yeah, that’s one of the great things about shaking the cocktail. If you want it to be effervescent and aromatic, that’s one of the reasons why you shake a cocktail because those ice cubes whip all those tiny air bubbles into the drink. And as they rise to the surface and pop on the surface, all these little micro-bubbles, they carry that aroma up to you.

Matt: 32:54 Right and I would assume just like an egg white, here you’re dealing with an oil. You want to break that up as much as you can and infuse it into the cocktail. The ice, the wet shake, just tear that up.

Austin: 33:03 Yep, absolutely.

Casey: 33:04 Well, I dove in and that’s delicious. I think that one is unreal ’cause you get a little bit of that …

Matt: 33:13 There’s no trace-

Casey: 33:15 Citrus, yeah.

Matt: 33:15 … of rye whiskey.

Casey: 33:17 No.

Matt: 33:17 I would not know.

Casey: 33:19 No, you get that … yeah

Matt: 33:20 If you told me this was a non-alcoholic health tonic, I would say can we pour some alcohol in it.

Austin: 33:28 Jokes on you, fair amount of booze is in there already.

Matt: 33:31 That is delicious. That’s absolutely delicious.

Austin: 33:32 Thank you.

Matt: 33:33 And the lemon-lime, yeah, just sort of sets off a little bit of the citrus.

Casey: 33:37 It’s sweet.

Matt: 33:39 I don’t know if it’s ’cause it’s an oil and it’s not juice but it’s not bitter.

Austin: 33:43 It’s not bitter and it’s not overly bright.

Matt: 33:46 It’s not [inaudible 00:33:47]

Austin: 33:49 This Savage lemon-lime brings sort of a citrus but not in a syrup-y way, kind of round way.

Matt: 33:56 It’s totally different, yeah.

Austin: 33:57 I can only describe it as round.

Matt: 33:58 Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say, not mouth coating or anything but you get a citrus around your whole mouth as opposed to when you just get lime juice you get citrus right on the front of your tongue.

Austin: 34:07 Yep, and then your jaw goes uh.

Matt: 34:09 Yeah, that thing in the back of your teeth happens. Not at all here though. It’s really nice, it’s really rounded. I think we’ll sit here and we’ll enjoy these for a little bit and then we’ll check back in and see how we feel at the end of the cocktails.

Casey: 34:22 I already feel good.

Matt: 34:24 Yeah, it’s not like a drunk, it’s more like a …

Casey: 34:27 It’s not a high either. It’s like my body just is like ah.

Matt: 34:31 Nice kinda relaxed sort of.

Casey: 34:34 My body just feels very, again, lightweight is the only word I can keep coming up with. All my muscle pain or soreness or tension is done, like I’m on a cloud, I’m sitting on a cloud.

Matt: 34:46 I should mention we had a massive snow storm and we shoveled snow and then Casey went and taught aerobics. So her body is tired. I’m old and sore because I had to shovel snow. But yeah, I feel pretty good.

Casey: 34:57 Yeah, and my body feels really good.

Matt: 34:57 I feel pretty good.

Casey: 34:57 And my body usually doesn’t because I hurt it so much. But yeah, this is kind of nice.

Matt: 35:03 So CBD cocktails. Yay or nay? You’re into it?

Casey: 35:07 Yes, I am into it. I’m into it on a limited basis though.

Matt: 35:12 Yeah, I agree.

Casey: 35:13 I’m into it, especially when they enhance the flavor like these ones did, with his cocktails.

Matt: 35:17 Definitely.

Casey: 35:17 That was really cool.

Matt: 35:19 Austin thanks so much for your time. You were great man.

Austin: 35:21 Hey thank you very much, thanks for coming down.

Matt: 35:22 I appreciate it.

Casey: 35:23 I was great too, thank you.

Austin: 35:24 Thanks Casey.

Casey: 35:24 Yeah, thanks guys.

Matt: 35:29 Huge thanks to our friends at Herbe Sainte down at Aksarben in Omaha, Nebraska. If you’re ever in town, you should definitely swing through. Their Cajun food is wonderful. I highly suggest the jambalaya. We will have a link to their site in the show notes so you can check out their menu and their other cocktails. And I hope the next time you mix up a cocktail at home, you might think about adding a little CBD oil, see what happens.

Matt: 35:52 That about does it for this episode but I hope you guys learned some quick and easy ways to add both hemp seeds and CBD into your diet with things that are readily available everywhere right now. And of course, I want to hear from you guys. How are you already incorporating hemp into your diet? You can leave us a message on our Google Voice line at 402-819-6417 and tell us all about it. You can use that same phone number to ask any questions you’d like answered. Later on in the future I foresee having whole segments where we just take your questions and somebody smarter than me is gonna answer them. I promise you that. You can always reach out to us at @ministryofhemp on Twitter or \ministryofhemp on Facebook and drop your questions there too. Or you can email me your questions to matt@ministryofhemp.com. As always you’ll be able to find a full transcript of the show attached to the notes, for the hearing impaired. And I want to say a huge thanks to everybody that reached out after the first episode and told me what you thought and how much you dug the show. And it really does do us a huge favor if you go to iTunes and write a short review. It really helps the show and it helps us get our message out to other people who want to learn about hemp.

Matt: 37:18 Thanks for listening to the Ministry of Hemp and we’ll see you in a couple weeks for episode three. In the meantime, take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions will you? This is Matt Baum Ministry of Hemp podcast.

Click on the link below to download the full transcript of Episode 2:

• Ministry of Hemp Podcast Episode 2 Transcript PDF

The post Here’s How & Why I Add Hemp Seeds To Every Meal Today! appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

New Belgium Brewing recently invited our Editor in Chief to a special Austin, Texas tasting of their new hemp beer, The Hemperor HPA.

The Hemperor is a unique new offering. This is the first hemp beer from a brewery as ubiquitous as New Belgium. While this “HPA” or Hemp Pale Ale has the strong flavor of hops, the hemp flavor balances out the bitterness. The smell of The Hemperor has to be experienced to be believed. The private downtown bar where the tasting took place smelled like a hemp field at harvest, just from the open bottles and glasses of beer.

https://youtu.be/ZKqUX7QQlTo

New Belgium are also believers in hemp legalization. One dollar from every bottle sold goes to groups like Hemp 4 Victory.

“It’s a crop that has a lot of stigma in this country and I think this beer could be a catalyst for change,” declared Steve Navas, brand activation manager at New Belgium.

New Belgium is also encouraging beer fans to contact their elected representatives and demand total hemp legalization.

HEMP AND HOPS COME TOGETHER IN THE HEMPEROR

Hemp and hops have a long history of human cultivation but they’ve rarely been combined in a modern beer. Since New Belgium is from Colorado, the heart of modern hemp growing in the U.S. it might be inevitable that they’d decide to mix the two.

“Our brewers met some farmers, got to brewing, and figured out it tastes great in a beer,” Navas said.

Regulations are one issue that may have kept hemp beers from reaching a national market before. As the creators of hemp wine discovered, the government bodies which oversee alcohol licensing and distribution in the U.S. are resistant to ingredients like hemp. Now for sale in 49 states, The Hemperor is still unavailable in Kansas, which has extremely strict laws on hemp products.

New Belgium is lobbying to change those regulations. “Hopefully in the next few months we’ll be able to sell this in that state as well,” Navas said.

Other than that small amount of resistance, he said people greet The Hemperor with excitement.

“People are overall ecstatic about it,” Navas said.

“The beer speaks for itself and it smells for itself,” he added, taking a whiff of the beer’s distinctive aroma in his glass.

OFFICIAL HEMPEROR BEER REVIEW

• Highlights: New Belgium’s The Hemperor HPA has an incredibly rich, herbal hempy aroma but contains absolutely no THC. It has a light golden amber color. The taste of hemp balances out the bitterness of the hops. A portion of the profits from every bottle sold go to hemp legalization causes.
• Price: $18.83 for a six-pack (Amazon)
• Strength: 7% alcohol by volume
• Taste & Aroma: Wow! Powerful green hemp aroma from this pale ale. The hemp adds a nutty, smooth flavor that balances out the hops, especially in comparison to most IPAs. This beer is sweet with a very mild bitter aftertaste.
• Ingredients: Water, ale yeast, wheat (Pale, White Wheat and Midnight Wheat), Hops (Nugget, Cascade, HBC 522 and Simcoe), Hemp hearts and natural flavor

The Hemperor is sourced from Colorado-grown hemp plants. Despite the smell, The Hemperor contains does not contain any THC, the ingredient in marijuana that makes people feel high. It’s also not a source of CBD or any of the other cannabinoids or terpenes found in the cannabis plant, just delicious hemp flavor. Sign up at Hemp 4 Victory to join the efforts of New Belgium and their allies to spread the word about hemp legalization.

The post The Hemperor Beer Review: New Belgium Adds Hemp Flavor & Aroma To Hops appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

There are many products that utilize hemp; clothing, skincare products, CBD oils & tinctures, and hemp-enhanced edibles, but there remains a noticeable absence of hemp in the alcohol industry. Most notably, the craft beer market, a market that’s notorious for experimentation to produce unique flavors.

Thanks to unmet market needs and the relaxing regulations towards hemp & cannabis products, breweries such as New Belgium have initiated their foray into the hemp craft beer market. Upon their release of “The Hemperor,” the Colorado brewery gained nationwide media attention due to this trailblazing and delicious beverage.

Previously, we reviewed The Hemperor and interviewed a local maker of hemp wine. The recent growth of hemp craft beer left us eager to look deeper into this enticing topic.

THE CURRENT STATE OF THE HEMP CRAFT BEER MARKET

Other breweries looking to imitate New Belgium’s success must fight a gauntlet of obstacles.

Thanks to the difficulty of state and federal regulations, New Belgium had to experiment with many iterations of The Hemperor. This is because the use of hemp flowers & leaves in products is forbidden by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The use of CBD is also forbidden in alcohol products with national distribution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKqUX7QQlTo

Eventually, the brewery landed on hulled hemp seeds as the base for The Hemperor. Hulled hemp seeds, better known as hemp hearts, are an ingredient that can be found in your local supermarket. Hemp hearts are versatile, and can be used in many applications such as making hemp milk. Now, The Hemperor is available in all states except Kansas (party poopers if you ask us).

With the success of New Belgium, major beer companies are looking to get a slice of the pie. Corona & Modelo manufacturer Constellation Brands, Blue Moon founder Keith Villa, and Molson Coors are some of the notable names looking to dip their toes into hemp and cannabis beer. Constellation Brands and Molson Coors partnered with Canadian cannabis producers, while Keith Villa is working with a producer in his home state of Colorado.

BREWERIES THAT MAKE HEMP CRAFT BEER

New Belgium Brewing: The Hemperor

New Belgium are experiencing a moment as the most recognized hemp craft beer trailblazer. Released in April of this year, New Belgium have already experienced an instant success with The Hemperor. While they haven’t released a statement with future plans, one can almost be sure that they will release more hemp infused products.

Sweetwater Brewing Company: 420 Strain G13 IPA

This Atlanta based brewery has long been a fan of cannabis culture. Their best seller is the aptly named “420 Extra Pale Ale.” This past June, the brewery finally released their first (of seemingly many to come) hemp-enhanced beers. Their new beverage, “420 Strain G13 IPA,” mimics the famous G13 strain of psychoactive cannabis in terms of smell and taste, without the high. Sweetwater achieves this by infusing the pale ale with hemp, hops, terpenes, and other organic materials.

In a statement in the New York Times, co-founder Freddy Bensch says: “We think the drinker and the cannabis consumer are the same person.”

Bensch means that by releasing their G13 product, the brewery is tapping into a market that’s already connected to their traditional target-market. It’s worth noting that in just a couple of months, the G13 IPA has become their 2nd highest selling product.

Lagunitas Brewing: Hi-Fi Hops

With the recreational use of psychoactive cannabis becoming legal, California-based Lagunitas Brewery pounced on the new market. Releasing their “Hi-Fi Hops” product line, in collaboration with CannaCraft (a cannabis-extract manufacturer), they offer cannabis-infused sparkling water drinks. Hi-Fi Hops products can only be found in medical marijuana dispensaries in California. While a little more left-field, the introduction of a cannabis-infused sparkling water opens the conversation up from merely a beer product, into a whole slew of hemp, CBD & THC-infused beverages.

Lagunitas is at the forefront of the fusion of cannabis into traditional drinks.

WHERE HEMP CRAFT BEER FITS INTO CRAFT BEER CULTURE

So where does hemp craft beer stand within existing craft beer culture?

Craft beer culture is already at the forefront of counterculture. Craft beers began with mad-scientist brewers looking for new flavors in unconventional ingredients. Long synonymous with bearded, beanie-wearing hipsters, craft beer culture is comfortable standing out. In fact, being different is the greatest asset of a craft beer. One needs only to look at the ingredients and artwork on their bottles to recognize this.

Cannabis and hemp belong to the same family of plants as hops. Breweries such as New Belgium and Sweetwater are using the green & herbal notes of the hemp plant to enhance their IPAs, which already tout flavors of bitterness, freshness and hoppiness.

So, we think that hemp craft beers will fit right in! In fact, we believe it’ll do more than fit in, we think they will thrive. The same hipster beanie-wearing dudes who drink IPAs are probably already using hemp in their breakfasts or daily supplements; so why not have hemp with their beer?

The post Hemp Craft Beer & The Breweries That Make It appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

This plant is still best known for its psychoactive uses (in a form often called “marijuana”) or for CBD, the popular nutritional supplement. However, hemp is an amazing multi-purpose plant. Hemp seeds, in particular, are very healthy as a food.

After struggling under decades of stigma, today consumers prize hemp for its health benefits. No other single plant source can compare with the nutritional value of hemp seeds. In its small seed, hemp packs a good source of amino acids, protein, fiber, and essential fatty acids. Hemp is also considered to be more allergy-free than some plant proteins.

Today, you can commonly find hemp hearts (hulled hemp seeds) in almost any grocery store, along with numerous hemp protein powders and similar products. However, at the end of this article, we’ve linked to some of our favorite brands available on Amazon, for ease of ordering. While we recommend that you never buy CBD oil on Amazon, it’s safe to order hemp food products on Amazon just as you would any other ingredient.

Benefits of hemp seed

These seeds have several benefits that make them a superior source of daily nutrients:

• Hemp seeds are nutritionally superior to flax, chia, or fish Oil

Hemp contains both GLA (gamma linolenic acid) and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid). GLA is a fatty acid that has anti-inflammatory properties. CLA is a building block of cell membranes. It also offers more protein than Flax & Chia.

• Balanced ratio of Essential Fatty Acids

Hemp offers a naturally balanced 1:3 ratio of Omega-3 and Omega-6 Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs). EFAs are responsible for strengthening your immune system.

“One of the most complete sources of vegetable nutrition”

• Hemp seeds offer all 10 Essential Amino Acids

There are 8 amino acids that the human body cannot make and 2 more the body cannot make in sufficient quantity. Hemp offers all these essential amino acids in its seed.

• Great source of dietary fiber

Hemp seeds offer 17g of fiber per serving, while a serving of hemp protein also contains 8-11g of fiber. Hemp is a great way to add fiber to your daily diet.

• Source of vitamins and minerals

Hemp seeds are a great source of vitamin E and minerals such as phosphorus, potassium, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, iron and zinc.

• 25% of the total calories are high quality protein

65% of the protein in hemp seed is edestin, a protein that helps your immune system to properly function. 35% of the protein is albumin, which helps the protein get easily assimilated into the body. Hemp offers a great alternative protein if you are allergic to dairy.

• Fights bad cholesterol levels & blood clots

Studies have suggested that hemp seed and hemp seed oil can help break down cholesterol as well as fight blood clots, which are typically caused by high cholesterol levels.

• Helps improve various skin conditions

Clinical trials have shown that the Omega-3 and Omega-6 found in hemp oil help dry skin and are beneficial for the treatment of conditions such as eczema and psoriasis.

While eating healthy can be great for your skin, hemp oil and hemp-based products may be even more beneficial when used directly in skin care.

Ways to eat hemp seeds

Hemp seeds can be eaten in so many different ways. It just really depends on your creativity.

Here are just a few common ways to eat them:

• Eat raw as a snack.
• Mix into your smoothie.
• Sprinkle on top of cereal, salads, yogurt, or even oatmeal.
• Substitute hemp hearts for breadcrumbs to coat chicken or fish.
• Blend with water to make hemp seed milk.
• Ground hemp seed to use it as a condiment.
• Toasted hemp seeds can be eaten like popcorn.

Recipes for hemp hearts

Today, you can find hemp heart recipes on many food websites. We’ve collected a few of our favorite hemp recipes that we’ve published over the last few years below:

Easy Hemp Protein Smoothie

Ultimate Hemp Oatmeal

Hemp Heart Fried Shrimp

No Bake Hemp Energy Balls

Things to consider when buying hemp seeds

With hemp food products so widely available, it’s pretty easy to buy hemp hearts or hemp protein. Still, here’s a few tips:

• What kind of hemp seeds are you buying?

Hulled hemp, often called hemp hearts, is the entire seed with the crunchy outer shell removed.

Hulling the seeds, rather than eating as a whole, makes it easier to eat. Removing the shell also makes the hemp hearts more nutritious, as it increases the overall percentage of protein and essential fatty acids. You can eat hemp hearts in numerous ways, such as mixing in shakes, cereal, or sprinkling some on your salad.

Toasted hemp seeds are whole seeds that are roasted in high temperatures for a varied length of time. This results in a popcorn like snack. Toasted hemp is a popular snack in many countries around the world, especially in the Middle East.

In addition to hulled & toasted hemp seeds, producers add hemp as an ingredient to their products, as hemp is such a healthy supplement. Be on the lookout to see if you run into any energy bars or spreads that have hemp in them! Most grocery stores also stock hemp protein powders that are perfect for adding to smoothies and shakes.

• Where are the seeds grown?

Hemp is grown in most industrialized countries, including the United States.

Most hemp grown in the U.S. is grown for CBD, a popular nutritional supplement with many benefits. Slowly, U.S. farmers are producing more acres of hemp in the U.S. for other uses, including food. Many other countries typically grow hemp for industrial use (construction, textiles, etc.) and for food.

Outside of the United States, Canada has the best quality hemp grown for food. This is not only because of the taste of the hemp strain that Canadian farmers use, but also because of the strict regulations that the Canadian government enforces.

Canadian farmers can only plant hemp seed varieties listed under Health Canada’s List of Approved Cultivars. Canadian farmers also don’t plant GMO seeds or use pesticides when farming hemp.

In general, you should avoid hemp grown in China or most other countries when selecting hemp foods. China doesn’t regulate hemp producers as strictly as Canadian farmers. An easy way to tell the difference between Canadian hemp and others is by taste.

Make sure to check labels to ensure the hemp is from Canada or the U.S.!

• What flavor are you looking for?

Hemp seeds have a pleasant nutty taste. Many people compare them to unflavored sunflower seeds, but with a much softer texture. We think you’ll find them delicious once you try them.

Most hemp hearts are unflavored, though there are some flavored hemp hearts available. When it comes to toasted hemp seeds, you’ll find a variety of flavors out there, much like peanuts or corn nuts.

• Do hemp seed brands matter?

It’s relatively easy to find hemp at your local grocery store. However, there’s also a lot of boutique U.S. brands that offer great hemp seed products through honest ingredients and fair prices.

Check out our full unbiased hemp seed brands review to find which brand offers the best quality hemp seeds and where you can buy them.

Kit O’Connell contributed to this guide.

The post Benefits of Hemp Seeds: Are These Good For You? appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, Matt talks about quarantine hemp cooking and cocktailing, featuring our recipe for hemp-infused bacon fat peanut butter cookies. Then Matt has a Conversation with Susan Trapp, terpene researcher and co-founder of terpedia.com.

This episode is part of our Women in Hemp series.

Terpenes are some of the most prevalent and diverse organic compounds. They create the familiar scent of many plants but serve many purposes in nature, even self-defense.

Susan has over 20 years of experience in the biotechnology field both as a plant-microbe molecular biology researcher and “beyond the lab bench.”  She has held scientific, management, and early-stage development positions within the biotech industry, academia, government, and start-up community, from algae biofuels to genomes. Dr. Trapp participated directly on the human genome project with Dr. Craig Venter early in her scientific career.

It was a real honor to get such a terpene expert on our show, so get ready for a deep, fascinating dive into terpene science.

Matt also mentions our recently published Meet the Editor video.

We want to hear from you!

Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to our podcast!

Be sure to subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbay, Stitcher, Pocketcasts, Google Play or your favorite podcast app. If you like what your hear leave us a review or star rating. It’s a quick and easy way to help get this show to others looking for Hemp information and please, share this episode on your own social media!

Become a MOH Insider and help spread the Hemp Gospel!

If you believe hemp can change the world then help us spread the word! Become a Ministry of Hemp Insider when you donate any amount on our Patreon page. You’ll be the first to hear about everything going on with our special newsletter plus exclusive Patron content including blogs, podcast extras and more. Visit the Ministry of Hemp on Patreon and become an Insider now!

Dr. Susan Trapp, Queen of Terpenes: Complete podcast episode transcript

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education. Hello again, it’s Matt Baum, I’m your host for the Ministry of Hemp Podcast and still in quarantine, hopefully like you are as well. I listened to the last few shows we put out recently and they started with sort of dire warnings, and in the face of a global pandemic that’s probably appropriate, but I want to lighten things up just a little bit to get this show going.

Matt Baum:
That is not to say that everything is fine, go out, get back to work because life is good, we still need to hunker down a bit and we still need to wear masks when we go to the grocery store, socially distance, et cetera, but there are some things we can be doing at home in the meantime, like cooking. My wife and I have been doing a ton of cooking and a little bit of cocktailing as well, and we’ve tried to incorporate hemp into that cooking and cocktailing.

Cooking with hemp under quarantine

Matt Baum:
Back in episode 27 of the show, you might remember I spoke to Hillary Kelsay of Humming Hemp and she was nice enough to send me a bunch of hemp oil and some of their Humming Hemp hearts, which are amazing on just about everything. In fact, just tonight, I made a cast iron roasted chicken quarter with tomato jam and I served it over some fried rice and beans that I had the night before, sort of like a Latin rice and beans thing and I topped it with some of their spicy hemp hearts and just threw it under the broiler for a minute or two to crisp everything up, it was wonderful.

Matt Baum:
My wife has been making cocktails with CBD simple syrup from a company called Azuca, you may remember I interviewed their CEO, Ron Silver, back in episode 33. You can find all of these on our site and of course you can find them on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to podcasts, but the point is it’s not hard to incorporate CBD into your diet. And right now we have an amazing recipe on the site for peanut butter cookies that are made with bacon fat infused with CBD, you could also infuse it with THC if that’s your jam, whatever, they are in credible.

Matt Baum:
We tried them this past weekend and oh my God, they’re absolutely delicious. The recipe comes courtesy of Chef Sebastian Carosi, who hopefully I’m going to be talking to on this show real soon. I know I talk about it a lot, but I come from a food background and I love cooking with hemp and incorporating hemp into food, not just CBD but hemp itself because the flavor is so interesting. In fact, Humming Hemp’s hemp oil has become my go-to topping for popcorn.

Matt Baum:
It brings this nutty, almost salted sunflower taste to the popcorn that I cannot get enough of. The point is quarantine, it can get boring, sure, but it doesn’t have to be all isolation and doom and gloom. You can treat yourself, you can do some experiments and you can do yourself a favor by introducing some CBD into your diet and easing your anxiety a little bit while you have a nice drink or even a great meal.

Matt Baum:
Speaking of which, I would love to hear your ideas for introducing hemp into your diet. Give us a call at (402) 819-4894, that is the Ministry of Hemp hotline where you can leave a message and tell me how are you cooking and cocktailing with hemp during your quarantine. I would love to hear from you and real soon here, I know I’ve promised it for a while, but Kit and I are going to be doing a Q&A show where we sit down and play your voicemails and talk about them.

Meet Susan Trapp, Queen of Terpenes

Matt Baum:
Kit is the Editor-in-Chief of ministryofhemp.com. By the way, I’ve mentioned a lot and I’m going to talk about him later in the show, but first let’s get to our conversation this week. This time I’m talking with Susan Trapp, she describes herself as the Chief Terpene Officer for terpedia.com. Susan is amazing, she’s probably one of the most intelligent people I have ever interviewed and she is a riot. We had a lot of fun during this interview. She’s just an incredible person.

Matt Baum:
She worked on the Human Genome Project. Very soon, she’s going to be teaching accredited courses on terpenes, and she helped me with a serious pronunciation issue. You’re going to hear me say the word terpene probably a hundred times, the word is terpenes, and I’m never going to forget it now and I’m glad she corrected me. I apologize in advance for how many times I mispronounced it. This is my conversation about terpenes with Susan Trapp.

Matt Baum:
Welcome to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, thanks for joining me. I brought you here because you are kind of a terpene nerd from what I understand, and today we are going to learn about terpenes because honestly, I read some stuff online, I still don’t totally get it, and I know our audience wants to know so let’s just start with, what is a terpene?

Susan Trapp:
Okay. All right. Terpenes are the largest class of natural products in plants.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Susan Trapp:
Okay? And also actually in nature. And so still the question is what are terpenes, right? So terpenes when you say largest class of natural products, right, so when we … I’m going to break this down. So natural products, right, when we talk about natural products in chemistry we’re talking about, for example, aspirin, silicic acid, right? That is a compound, that is a natural product that is derived from the willow bark, yeah, the bark of a willow tree. And so these terpenes are essentially kind of, they are the same thing. They are these large class of compounds that are produced by plants for a variety of reasons. In fact-

Matt Baum:
So it’s not just cannabis though, it’s several different plants?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah, it’s all plants, that’s the amazing thing about terpenes. And one of my missions with teaching about terpenes and teaching terpenes at some of these conferences, kind of general conferences, is to really explain and educate people that terpenes are this large class and they’re essentially in your herb cabinet.

Matt Baum:
Okay. What does that mean, they’re in my herb cabinet?

Susan Trapp:
I mean, so you’ve heard of the essential oils.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Susan Trapp:
Right? So for example, like lavender.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Susan Trapp:
Lavender, when you press the oil out of lavender, you get an essential oil. That essential oil is a combination of terpenes, basil, rosemary, lavender, turmeric. When you press those plants, right, an oil comes out and though those oils are primarily full of these compounds called terpenes, right? And they differ. So essentially there’s a different formulation per herb. And so cannabis is really no surprise, and my back …

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. To continue to clarify, so in regards to for example lavender, which smells really nice, right, there are a number of essential oils or a number of terpenes within that essential oil of lavender. Right? Same thing with basil. Basil has a certain smell, so it has a different combination of terpenes that are in basil. Shockingly-

Matt Baum:
So is the terpene directly related to the smell?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah. So terpenes are what we call in chemistry, the volatile essential oils. So essentially what that means is they are aromatic, so they smell. In our olfactory system, we have receptors for them.

Matt Baum:
Not volatile, like they’re going to explode, but volatile like …

Susan Trapp:
Volatile and then in that they’re aromatic.

Terpene science beyond cannabis

Matt Baum:
Got you. Okay. And now I was of the mindset that terpenes literally only existed in cannabis, but basically what you were saying is the terpene is what gives smell to just about any plan that has smell. Like I assume flowers have terpene also.

Susan Trapp:
Yes. And sometimes not good, but it just depends on that combination of terpenes that are in there. And then there are other compounds, but primarily that essential oil is a combination of terpenes that are produced by the plant.

Matt Baum:
Okay. Now what is the terpene itself? Is it like an atomic level, is it a part of the plant? I mean, is it …

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. I have a number of presentations that I give, and I wish I could show it because it’s easier, I should have pulled it up.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, this is podcast world. Sorry, this is a audio moment.

Susan Trapp:
I know, I need to practice so I can come up with good examples. Because I teach this biology so sometimes I get too technical, but the bottom line-

Matt Baum:
I’ll stop you if you do, don’t worry.

Susan Trapp:
… Like for example, a sugar molecule, right, it’s a pretty simple molecule and it’s a … Usually we call it a pentose ring or hexose ring. So pentose being five carbons or six carbons, compounds, right?

Matt Baum:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Susan Trapp:
And you’ve seen the picture of THC, right?

Matt Baum:
Right.

How plants build terpenes

Susan Trapp:
You see these big compounds. Okay. So glucose or actually, a sugar molecule without even getting into the details of which one are a pretty simple compound, right? And so you can build like a sugar molecule and a sugar molecule, actually glucose, glucose, glucose, glucose, and what you end up with is something like in biology, we would call that cellulose a polymer. So glucose, one sugar molecule is what we would call a monomer or one unit. A couple of them-

Matt Baum:
Right. When you connect a bunch then you’ve got cellulose.

Susan Trapp:
… A polymer.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Susan Trapp:
Right?

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Susan Trapp:
So terpenes are somewhat the same, not like that at all, but what I’m trying to get at is this is what we call a metabolic pathway.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Susan Trapp:
Right? So that’s how they are produced, right?

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Susan Trapp:
So plants actually do produce sugar. They use sunlight and-

Matt Baum:
Right, that’s part of the deal.

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah. That’s part of the deal. And so plants what they do is they utilize what we would call substrates or building block molecules to produce polymers. It’s a little … I don’t know, this part I should probably explain better. So we have these buildings they’re called isoprene units. And isoprene, that E-N-E means double bond, and that’s more than you need to know in chemistry. But this isoprene unit means there are five carbons. And so-

Matt Baum:
Okay. And they’re all bonded?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah. Well, typically an isoprene unit is not in a circle, it’s what we call linear compounds.

Matt Baum:
Right, it’s like a line, not a circle.

Susan Trapp:
But they will … Right. And I have a slide where I use scrabble building blocks. So imagine one Scrabble A building blocks. So Scrabble A, an isoprene unit and another isoprene unit bind together, essentially, and you get what we call a monoterpene. So that’s essentially two isoprene units, one C5 carbon compound and another C5 carbon compound.

Matt Baum:
And they make one monoterpene, more or less?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Susan Trapp:
And the majority of terpenes of interest, and even the ones that really have nice smells, and this is a bit of an exaggeration, are monoterpenes. So the majority of terpenes even in cannabis, for example pinene, myrcene, which I’m sure you’ve heard of, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah, absolutely.

Susan Trapp:
Those are monoterpenes.

Matt Baum:
And the pinene gives things like the pine tree smell, and the myrcene gives stuff like the skunk smell, right?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

How plants use terpenes

Matt Baum:
Okay. So why? Why does a plant evolve to stink?

Susan Trapp:
Great question.

Matt Baum:
I mean what is the point?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, great question. All kinds of reasons.

Matt Baum:
It’s a good stink, I like that stink, it’s …

Susan Trapp:
All right. So the way I usually like to talk about terpenes is they’re essentially, and when I do give public talks, I essentially consider them like the immune system of the plant. That’s an easy way explain it. But the bottom line is they’re there to protect the plant from predators, right? But also there are some terpenes that are considered phytohormones. So phyto means plant, so a plant hormone. During my postdoc we studied bark beetle infestation of pine trees. Right?

Matt Baum:
Right. Yeah. They’re awful, like the ash borer.

Susan Trapp:
Well, but it was fascinating because what happens is the pine tree, right, a bark beetle comes to the tree, and usually it’s a tree that’s already a little bit sickly, like for example a drought where there’s not enough water, right? So the bark beetle comes to that tree, bores a hole. The tree itself has a response and shockingly, those are terpenes. There’s turpentine, resin, right?

Matt Baum:
Really?

Susan Trapp:
Those are actually diterpenes. So diterpenes would be … We can come back to that and you can piece it back together, but you have two building blocks, right, that makes a monoterpene, three of those makes a sesquiterpene, four of them makes a diterpene.

Matt Baum:
Okay. Whoa. And that’s when you start getting into like thick, sappy defense type?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
So turpentine, like which-

Susan Trapp:
Turpentine. Yeah. And turpentine historically, again, these are part of my slides, turpentine or turpentine was the first terpene identified, and essentially it was called turpentine because it was a German chemist who identified it, and that’s where the name terpenes came from.

Matt Baum:
… This is the same thing I’m thinking of, turpentine to remove paint? Right?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Comes from a tree?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
From terpenes?

Terpenes are everywhere in plants

Susan Trapp:
I mean, and I will continue to impress upon you. Like when I was in grad school and during my post doc, I studied terpenes having nothing to do with the cannabis industry, which I can come back to and explain if you want, but the bottom line, almost, at least back then, every paper that I wrote, and practically every paper or book that I read that talked about terpenes the first sentence was, “Terpenes are the largest class of natural products in plants.”

Susan Trapp:
So again, if you’re a natural product chemist or what not, you’re studying terpenes, you’re studying chlorophyll, there’s all kinds of phytochemicals, and right now I’m blinking, but again … And the reason there’s such a large class is because of what I explained to you, they are built on these very simple isoprene unit building blocks, and so you just …

Susan Trapp:
And for your benefit, I don’t know if you can see this, but isoprene units are here, right? Like these five carbon compounds. I’m going to knock over my coffee. And then you have monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes, diterpenes, sesterterpenes, which I didn’t really study those so I really only think about all the way up to diterpene. So diterpenes is four isoprene units. But my point is as you go all the way up to here, triterpenes, when you get up to these upper ones, right, cholesterol is part of that same pathway.

Matt Baum:
Cholesterol is a terpene?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, it’s a type of … The precursor for cholesterol is from the same pathway. And what I’m trying to say, so if you were a budding biologist, right, or a budding organic chemist, you learn about these metabolic pathways. So you have a compound and then you have an enzyme and an enzyme. What an enzyme does is it would take those two units and put them together. Right?

Susan Trapp:
Then you have the basics of a monoterpene, but then you have another enzyme that comes and sits down, and essentially we’ll add on what we call a hydroxyl group or an OH group. Right? And then that you just kind of keep adding little what we call functional groups on those terpenes. Then another enzyme comes along maybe, right, and it produces another isoprene unit. So now you have three of them and that’s how you make the sesquiterpene, so that’s like a metabolic pathway. And so what blows people away when I’m trying to say is in biology it’s one huge pathway that makes a polymer. Because when you get-

Matt Baum:
Is this is all? When I think-

Susan Trapp:
… A polymer is based on these unit of isoprene units.

Matt Baum:
… Because when I think polymers, I’m thinking of like plastic polymers and stuff, but you’re saying that this has been happening for millions of years, basically in nature with plants from the grass in your lawn to the pine tree in your front yard, all using the same chemicals for slightly different things, whether it is to keep a predator away or to heal a wound or to attract like a butterfly to pollinate it or something like that.

Susan Trapp:
Exactly.

Matt Baum:
Why don’t I know this? I mean, this sounds like it is the most … I was a chef for a while-

Susan Trapp:
It’s pretty cool-

Matt Baum:
… and I cooked for a long time.

Susan Trapp:
… I mean I can get really excited. I mean, but there are a variety of polymers that are natural. So like again, general chemistry, I teach this, this is like chapter five in general biology. There are four food groups, right? Carbohydrates, protein, lipids and actually DNA or nucleotides, right? A basic monomer of sugar and an amino acid is one, it’s the beginning of a protein, it’s the monomer of a protein. But what I’m trying to get at is, so when you have a protein, right, that’s a polymer, that’s a bunch of amino acids building blocks, one right next to the other and then you get this big-

Matt Baum:
That’s technically a polymer.

Susan Trapp:
… That’s technically a polymer, that’s what I’m getting at.

Matt Baum:
I did not know this. Okay. Now why is it-

Susan Trapp:
Same thing with sugars, right? So you have these basic fructose … You’re going to have to let me double-check before you publish this because I’m getting … Because they’re disaccharides and I get fructose-

Matt Baum:
… This is not going up for peer review, don’t worry. Okay?

Susan Trapp:
… Okay, good. I know, but it’s important to respect my PhD. I like to be accurate, all PhDs do. It’s important to-

Cannabis and terpenes

Matt Baum:
So why is that I never heard about any of this until I started learning about cannabis? How come cannabis people talk about terpenes more than anyone else? Because I was a chef, I worked with herbs all the time, we never talked about-

Susan Trapp:
You were a chef? Wow.

Matt Baum:
… terpenes and … Or I mean like essential oils, sure, because those do certain things and add smell and add flavor and whatnot, but there was no mention of terpenes until I started learning about the cannabis world. Why is the cannabis world so obsessed with this?

Susan Trapp:
Well, because they have medicinal benefits, right, and they … Essentially terpenes have been around forever and they’ve been used in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. I mean, again, I go back to … And like when I give some of these really introductory talks, I probably say over 20 times, terpenes are … And it’s terpenes.

Matt Baum:
Terpene. Sorry.

Susan Trapp:
Like T-E-R, yeah, terpenes.

Matt Baum:
I keep saying terpene, it’s terpene. I’m sorry.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. You’re sort of [inaudible 00:20:11] or whatever. Terpene, terpene, but yeah, it’s terpenes. And then we also refer to them sometime as terpenoids and I’m not going to get into that, but you hear both terpenes and terpenoids, and it’s just based on a little bit of difference in that compound of what’s on it, which we don’t have to get into. But once we are done with this podcast, you were like you have passed terpenes and cannabis 101 because you’ve heard of not only terpenes but terpenoids, right? Yeah. And the reason that they’re becoming of interest, right, was first of all, everybody was all excited about THC and 30% THC, and we all wanted to get a little higher. Right?

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Susan Trapp:
And then you discover … And there’s been terpene chemistry and cannabinoid chemistry, right, around for a while. The Israelis have been way far ahead of us for a long time, but nevertheless, then they discovered that there are other cannabinoids that are related. And it’s the same thing, they’re related. So those cannabinoids are part of the same THC metabolic pathway.

Matt Baum:
Okay. Real quick, let me ask a stupid question.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Cannabinoids and terpenes are completely different things, correct?

Susan Trapp:
They are too. They actually join-

Matt Baum:
That was going to sound really stupid for a minute there.

Susan Trapp:
… I mean they are, but actually now that you know a little bit about metabolic pathways, right, there are two pathways that join up, it’s called the hexanoate pathway and then there’s isoprene pathway or isoprenoid pathway that we’ve just been talking about these isoprenes. Those to join, and actually that is what makes up the cannabinoids.

Matt Baum:
Okay. So different, but also-

Susan Trapp:
But you could sort of-

Matt Baum:
… sort of the building blocks up?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah, they’re same, same but different, or technically they are different, right, but they are two different … They start out with two separate substrates, they have a bunch of enzymes that do things to it, and at some point a part of the isoprenoid pathway and a part of this other pathway join, right, and then you actually make-

Matt Baum:
Then you have cannabinoids.

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah.

The medicinal aspects of terpenes

Matt Baum:
Okay. So you had said that there’s medicinal aspects we’re learning about, can you talk about that a little bit? Like, what are we learning about?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, sure. And they’ve been around forever, for example like … I mean, I know a little about Chinese herbal medicine, but I’m not a Chinese herbalist or acupuncturist who is trained in-

Matt Baum:
Neither am I, and-

Susan Trapp:
… but nevertheless, the point is if they are the largest class of natural products in plants, right, that means they’re all over these plants, whether it’s a willow tree, turmeric or rosebud or whatever tea, right, those all have these plant compounds that can be extracted and utilized. And that is when you get that beautiful rose smell, that’s geranium.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Susan Trapp:
Right? The linalool has a bit of this lavender smell. Sage is from the same family and it just has a slightly different terpene profile, right, and so therefore it smells a little bit like sage, but it also has linalool in it. Right? And so they’ve been around for centuries, so traditional medicine has been utilizing them, they may not have known they were terpenes, but they’ve been utilizing them for a long time. Right? And I guess I would argue that they knew what they were doing. Same thing with like again, your medicine cabinet, basil, parsley, turmeric, rosemary, all of those have these compounds in them. Right?

Matt Baum:
So-

Susan Trapp:
And so-

Matt Baum:
… you touched on rosemary, let me ask you real quick, the rosemary and pine trees have a very similar smell, is that, that same … What did you call it?

Susan Trapp:
… Pinene?

Matt Baum:
Pinene. It’s the same terpene that’s present in cannabis that smells like pine?

Susan Trapp:
If you were doing a Venn diagram, right, they’ve got some that are the same and some that are different, but there’s an overlap of a couple.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Susan Trapp:
Most essential oils are a combination of anywhere between like, I don’t know, five and 15 different terpenes in different concentrations, and that’s what gives them their unique smell. And probably you could relate that back to like, that’s in a way why the cannabis industry is growing the way it is, right, because it’s a plant, it’s not a monodrug, it’s not a drug, it’s not a monopharmacy, it’s polypharmacy. You’ve got all these beneficial compounds in this plant that you’re eating, that’s why eating raw and fresh food-

Matt Baum:
Eat is you kale-

Susan Trapp:
… is so important.

Matt Baum:
… eat your romaine lettuce, like your dark greens. Right?

Susan Trapp:
Right, because the dark greens have chlorophyll and pigments and terpenes and many other things in them, and if it’s fresh they’re still active, and so then they help your body with lots of things and you’re taking those in and be able to utilize those little compounds as substrates for your body to do what it needs to do. Like-

Matt Baum:
Okay, dumb question time. Are there any-

Susan Trapp:
There’s no such thing as dumb question, I’m really big on that so-

Matt Baum:
… Okay, ignorant question time. Are there plants out there that don’t have terpenes?

Susan Trapp:
… That’s a great question.

Matt Baum:
Or is it universal?

Susan Trapp:
That’s a great question. I don’t know that for a fact, right, but I would guess probably not. That’s a great question, I need to look that up.

Matt Baum:
Just from what you’ve described, it sounds like it is such a base part of the plant as far as like they all use photosynthesis and whatnot and because of that the chemistry is so basic that it kind of has to be there. Right?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. I mean, and the interesting thing, so like I was in graduate school, and it dates me, so a long time ago-

Matt Baum:
Two years ago when you were in graduate school. Yes.

Susan Trapp:
… Right, two years ago because I’m so well preserved which is-

Matt Baum:
Again, this is radio they can’t see it so I just feel like-

Susan Trapp:
… I know.

Matt Baum:
… I talked to Susan Trapp and let me tell you, she was gorgeous.

Learning the purpose of terpenes

Susan Trapp:
Right. But many years ago in grad school when I was studying this, they also used to talk about the terpenes. They thought initially that they were the waste products of the plant, there was no purpose. They didn’t-

Matt Baum:
Really?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah. And I think as I continued to read and by the time I was doing my postdoc, it was like, yeah, or at least that was one of the theories, I read that a lot. So they used to be considered essentially the waste product. And another way to talk about them is, so a plant or even ourselves, right, so you’ve heard of, let’s see, essential minerals and vitamins, right? Those are-

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah. So we need those because we don’t produce them.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Susan Trapp:
Right?

Matt Baum:
That’s why we eat this stuff.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. So kind of same, same but different with a plant. So there’s such a thing as what we call primary metabolism, so the building blocks for the plant to make sugar, right? And then there’s something called secondary metabolism. It’s called secondary, which is what kind of natural products are talked about because secondary mean is secondary, it’s not essential for life.

Matt Baum:
Got you. Okay.

Susan Trapp:
Okay, so-

Matt Baum:
But it helps.

Susan Trapp:
… the plant is in theory not going to die if it doesn’t have these compounds, and so they used to call them, well they still call them secondary metabolism and, or they used to just think like, “Well, I don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just kind of there by accident because they’re part of this pathway,” but it’s turning out that’s really not the case-

Matt Baum:
We’re learning what they do.

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah. Co-evolution, Darwinian evolution, they’ve evolved for all kinds of things, right? The rose smells … And this is great, I should come up with a good example, which I don’t have for today, but like the hummingbird, right, it’s attracted to the … Probably, I’ve got to find a good example of a smell, right, and it’s attracted to that and the plant’s producing it so they’ve co-evolved together.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, absolutely.

Susan Trapp:
And as I was halfway through the bark beetle infestation story, so the bark beetle infestation, what happens again is that the bark beetle bores a hole, the tree if it’s healthy will cover that bark beetle with this sap, right? And then what’s cool, and there’s probably, well there is more to it than just what I’m telling you, but this is like … I wrote a review paper on this long time ago, but I think there’s now more to the story. But so then the bark beetle says, apparently it produces a pheromone that’s actually also terpenoid.

Matt Baum:
The bug makes-

Susan Trapp:
The bug. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
… terpene?

Susan Trapp:
Yes. It produces a pheromone that is actually a type of terpene. Right?

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Susan Trapp:
And it says, “Hey, bark beetles come on over here.” Like, “Come with me to get this tree, let’s bore some more holes.” And so I like to explain this as that there’s this very cool chemical warfare that goes on, on whether that tree lives or die, and it really depends how healthy that tree is and how many bark beetles get there. And at some point that the tree is not able to produce enough sap or whatever to kill all the bark beetles and then they kill the tree.

Matt Baum:
Okay, weird question. Is the tree creating sap to stop the bugs terpene from calling it out to other bugs?

Susan Trapp:
No, I think it’s just a response, right? Yeah, that’s just a response of the tree to protect itself. So it’s protecting itself from its predator.

Matt Baum:
So it’s plugging a hole is what it’s doing, it’s not … I’m giving it a little too much brain power, I guess maybe.

Susan Trapp:
Right, but that’s just one example and there’s many, so they-

Matt Baum:
But the bug is also making terpenes?

Susan Trapp:
… In that particular case, yes.

Matt Baum:
Okay. Do I make terpenes?

Susan Trapp:
No, actually I don’t think you … Well, I was about to say no. Getting back to this … Where did my chart go?

Matt Baum:
I can’t help you with that, I’m sorry.

Susan Trapp:
Back to this. I know. Back to the very cool chart. Where is it? Let’s see. Yeah, so when you get six isoprene units and you get to the point of triterpenes, precursors like well cholesterol, lanosterol, like the steroids, squalene. Squalene is kind of a precursor for a lot of hormones, so-

Matt Baum:
So we kind of do?

Susan Trapp:
… you could say that we do … Yeah.

Matt Baum:
This is blowing my mind. I mean honestly, I did not see this going where we have gone.

Susan Trapp:
Oh really? All right.

Matt Baum:
So Susan, I think we’ve got to-

Susan Trapp:
I mean they’re pretty … Go ahead.

How Susan Trapp became a terpene expert

Matt Baum:
… we’ve got to base understanding I think now that terpenes are all around us and not just in your weed, in your hemp. But let me ask you from just a personal perspective, how does Susan Trapp get so interested in terpenes that she decided she’s going to devote her whole life to it? How does that happen?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, that’s a great question as well. All right, so I’m going to babble so you stop me, but all right. Way back when I was a wee lass, right, I decided I wanted to go to graduate school. And actually prior to graduate school I worked, now I’m just pitching for myself, I worked on the Human Genome Project actually way back when.

Matt Baum:
Oh wow, that is amazing.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. Which was pretty interesting, and so I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and get a PhD. My parents were both medical doctors and I was always very anti-drug.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Susan Trapp:
And so-

Matt Baum:
Nothing wrong with that. I should have been a little more anti-drug, I’ll be honest.

Susan Trapp:
Well, anti-drug, not anti-drug in … Well I mean anti-drugs if your parents are medical doctors, it’s like you say you’re sick, they’re like, “Here, take an aspirin. Here, take a Tylenol,” that kind of drug, right?

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Susan Trapp:
Anti-pharmaceutical, not anti-drug. And so the bottom line is I was always very interested in natural medicine, right? And so I go to graduate school and I was interested in molecular biology, and it was still kind of in the early days, and I stumbled upon … I got into a PhD program, which was biochemistry and molecular biology, biochemistry and chemistry.

Susan Trapp:
And we actually didn’t have that much molecular biology at that time, and so I discovered you have to pick yourself an advisor and pick a topic. And the person I chose was working on natural … He was a natural product, organic chemist, so this … Yeah, you know what natural products are. And he was actually studying terpenes, and he was studying terpenes, fungal terpenes.

Matt Baum:
Of course, fungus does it too.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, fungus does it too. One of the more topical, and this will be of interest to the cannabis listeners. So what he was studying, there are these compounds, there are fungal terpenes that actually produce toxins which are also terpenes and so-

Matt Baum:
Why wouldn’t they be?

Susan Trapp:
… And one of those is actually, so let’s see, fusariums [inaudible 00:34:04]. So fusarium is a fungus that grows on plants. It usually grows above the Mason-Dixon line, and the wheat crops, but also cannabis. So when people are testing their cannabis for a variety of microbes, right? The testing of pesticides and microbes, one of the things they’re testing is this fusarium. And they’re testing for fusarium-

Matt Baum:
It’s like a mold, right?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah, that’s a fungus, which produces this compound, which is a sesquiterpene, that’s three isoprene units. Right?

Matt Baum:
My God, yeah, we learned all about it.

Susan Trapp:
Right, called Trichophytons, and they’re pretty toxic. When I was first learning about this, and the way I talk about it is, below the Mason … Most people have not heard of fusarium, they have not heard of Trichophytons, but a lot of people have heard of Aspirgillus, which is a fungus that produces aflatoxins, which is not a terpene as far as I know. I’m pretty sure it’s not a terpene, I’ll have to double-check on it. But anyway, below the Mason-Dixon line, Aspirgillus will grow on peanuts. It’s one of the most known and potent carcinogens known to man. At least again, this is … I’m citing my thesis in 10 plus years of education.

Matt Baum:
Well, you’re the guest, so yeah, blow your own horn, it’s fine.

Susan Trapp:
Well I’m blowing my own horn, but I kind of left the terpene field after graduate school and then I came back, and so there’s a bit of a gap that I’m trying to catch up on.

Matt Baum:
Oh, got you.

Susan Trapp:
But the bottom line is I was interested in that. I mean, the short story would be I was interested in natural medicine and this guy was doing natural product medicine. And he actually had a genomics or a DNA project, and that’s why I ended up working with him on terpene. So he was an expert on these fungal terpenoids, and a group of scientists out of Brazil contacted him because they had cows that were eating this plant, a different plant, it was called Baccharis megapotamica, and that plant was causing what they call mycotoxicosis. And so for those readers it’s like plug your ears right now if you don’t want to hear what’s next.

Matt Baum:
No, let’s get gross. Let’s do it.

Susan Trapp:
It is really gross, I have a picture from my PhD thesis, right, where you can just see the cow that has ingested this, they’ve just got blood coming out of all of their [inaudible 00:36:34]

Matt Baum:
So it’s just like cellular, there’s like falling apart basically?

Susan Trapp:
It’s bad. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Oh God.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. And so he came up with this … He used to come up with cool, grandiose hypotheses, that’s what I loved about him, and that’s Bruce Jarvis, and he’s a genuine terpene expert. He’s been studying terpene, terpenoids for 50 years. So it’s an old field as well, right? It’s not even a new field. But anyway, so he wanted to prove that these genes, because at that time he thought they didn’t think that these particular type of compounds, these trichophyton like compounds, so a specific type of terpene, they shouldn’t have been in plants, they were only fungal, and so he was like, horizontal-

Matt Baum:
Okay. He was looking at it and saying, it doesn’t make sense where the cows would get this because this shouldn’t be in the plant, therefore there has to be a fungus involved that is making this.

Susan Trapp:
… Right, or that somehow the genes for those … There’s such a thing as horizontal gene transfer where the genes have jumped-

Matt Baum:
From the fungus-

Susan Trapp:
… from the fungus-

Matt Baum:
… to the plant

Susan Trapp:
… to the plant.

Matt Baum:
That’s terrifying.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. And that happens. And there weren’t that many cases of that way back when, but there’s plenty of them now because now we’ve sequenced the human genome, you can actually study DNA and the sequences and really get into the nitty-gritty of where those genes come from, kind of even like COVID-19. Right?

Matt Baum:
Sure. Absolutely.

Susan Trapp:
Like they’ve been studying like was it manmade or not? Genomicists and molecular biologists are very clever and they can do a good job of at least surmising with a lot of sound science, but probably that’s not the case, at least-

Matt Baum:
So it sounds to me like you are a hardcore nerd that loves to learn cool stuff. And the terpene-

Susan Trapp:
… I love molecular biology, and I love …. I fell in love with DNA when I was an undergrad and so in a way I found the perfect project in grad school because I was interested in natural medicine. Anti-medical doctor because my parents were doctors I was just anti like, “I’m not going to take drugs, I’m going to get it off myself.”

Matt Baum:
… My dad was a salesman, that’s why I’m in web hosting, you know?

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, right. But I had already been inundated with … I mean I got to work for, and I am tooting my own horn, when I was wee, young lass I worked for guy named Dr. Craig Venter, who’s quite famous now. He’s famous for having sequenced the human genome. He started a number of-

Matt Baum:
That’s something.

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah, he started a number of companies, the Synthetic Genomics or Synthetic … I think, yeah, Synthetic Genomes. I think that’s what they’re called, I have to go look them up. He’s is in San Diego, but he started a number of companies and so … Right. I got to work on the Human Genome Project, I got to learn how to sequence early on. The generation before me when you actually tried to sequence DNA to understand each nucleotide in the DNA, they had to use radioactivity and it was very laborious. Yeah. And so I was like that first generation that you’ve got to just put it on a machine and fluorescently label the DNA, blah blah blah-

Matt Baum:
Yeah, and you see the line-

Susan Trapp:
… you get this output. Right.

Matt Baum:
… and you line the black lines up and everything, and yeah. Okay, so let me ask you-

Susan Trapp:
Yeah, so as you know, I couldn’t let that go.

Matt Baum:
… to sum up because we’ve … Whoa, this has been crazy. But to sum up, if you were to pick one thing, what do you think is the coolest thing about terpenes?

Susan Trapp:
Wow, what a great question. This is good practice, so that part I guess you get to cut out.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, it’s going to come up., someone’s going to ask you this.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. No, great question. I guess the coolest thing about them is that they really are in a way your medicine cabinet, and I think that’s why they’re getting so much play in the cannabis industry. Like I’ve studied them for a long time, but when I got into the cannabis industry and I started to educate other people and try to explain it just like I’m trying to explain it to you to make these connections on terpenes, and how they’re part of nature, and they’re this huge, large class, which is pretty cool and they’ve been around forever. Right?

Susan Trapp:
And they’re important in the perfume industry, and the cosmetic industry, and the commercial industry of cleaners and toothpaste, peppermint, spearmint, camphor, whatever, but they are this incredible cabinet of medicine, and they’re at our fingertips.

Susan Trapp and Terpedia

Matt Baum:
Susan, you have been amazing and you have completely blown my mind.

Susan Trapp:
I have a website that’s actually starting to look like a real website called terpedia.com.

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah, okay. I wanted to ask you about that, tell me a little bit about terpedia.com.

Susan Trapp:
Terpedia, like I have a mission statement ready to-

Matt Baum:
Oh, hey. Nice.

Susan Trapp:
… We’re starting to get real, right?

Matt Baum:
Getting real all of sudden.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah. Myself and my co-founder, what we envision is a world where cannabis enthusiasts, herbalists and research professionals no longer have to suffer the lack of professional curated terpene content. So terpedia enables viewers to benefit through valid sources, data and literature that facilitates sound science. So really what we’re trying to do is develop a, it’s not quite a knowledge base, but … So it’s on its way to being an actually terpene knowledge base or essentially an encyclopedia of terpenes in the modern world, but-

Matt Baum:
And we can go there now, terpedia.com? We can go there now, there’s a site there?

Susan Trapp:
… Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Awesome.

Susan Trapp:
We’re building it, right? And so the idea behind it is that, so a lot of people in the cannabis industry, they know something about cannabinoids, they don’t know that much about terpenes, and what we’re really trying to do is deliver sound science and sound claims and appropriate dosing. Right? And so what we really want to do is actually … So kind of phase one is get that information out, and get the information that the medicinal benefits that exist, and there aren’t that many.

Susan Trapp:
So terpenes have been around forever, but they’ve been used for commercial purposes. So one thing I didn’t get to say is like, after turpentine was discovered they utilized like type of terpenes to coat the bottom of naval boats, right, so it’s an ancient industry. And then you’ve got these really floral terpenes, cosmetic industry or whatnot. But we haven’t really … And ancient medicine knows about them and uses them, right, but we really don’t have that much medical scientific evidence on what they’re doing and how they work-

Matt Baum:
That’s what … Yeah.

Susan Trapp:
… but what I can assure you of is that they’re being overused just kind of like we all got high off to 20% THC, right, so then we bumped it up to 30, so right now everybody’s like, “Ah, let’s throw in more terps.” And my hypothesis that I try to get across at my talks is more terpenes aren’t necessarily better.

Matt Baum:
Right. It’s-

Susan Trapp:
Sometimes they are-

Matt Baum:
… probably the type-

Susan Trapp:
But usually they probably aren’t.

Matt Baum:
… is more important than the amount, I would guess.

Susan Trapp:
Well, they’re found traditionally in very tiny amounts, you don’t need much to get that floral smell. You don’t need that much to kill … A bark beetle is pretty small.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Susan Trapp:
Right? So it’s producing a pheromone, you don’t need much for that tree to respond.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s amazing.

Susan Trapp:
We probably don’t either because we’ve all co-evolved together. But that kind of data is not out there yet, and so that’s what we’re trying to do is build like a knowledge base where people can come to us, and if they have a product or formulation, we will have the papers, we’ll be able to find the science, we’ll at least be able to help provide them potentially formulations that work for pain, arthritis, the basics, but on top of it, if they want to throw this and that in, we’re going to have that sound science behind it, and we’re building it.

Matt Baum:
This sounds awesome. This sounds so cool.

Susan Trapp:
Ah, thank you.

Matt Baum:
Susan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us on the Ministry of Hemp. Thank you for roping and riding on the wild West of the terpene frontier, right?

Susan Trapp:
Terpene. Say terpene.

Matt Baum:
Terpene. Oh my God.

Susan Trapp:
And then I want to hear you say terpenoid.

Matt Baum:
Terpenoid.

Susan Trapp:
There you go.

Matt Baum:
I’m going to put a rubber band around my wrist and I whip myself every time I say it wrong.

Susan Trapp:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Thank you so much, this has really been great.

Susan Trapp:
You’re so welcome, I’m glad we finally got to do this. Thank you for-

Matt Baum:
You are so fun to talk to, by the way, I would love to go to one of your talks. I mean-

Susan Trapp:
… Really?

Matt Baum:
… you’re a riot.

Susan Trapp:
All right.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
This is great. Yeah, seriously. Thanks again to Susan for coming on the show. I’m sorry if some of that seemed a little hectic, but it was my fault not so much hers. There was so much information that she was trying to impart and I wanted to know all of it, and I’m really excited for to see where terpedia.com goes. Of course, we will have a link to terpedia.com in the show notes for this episode.

Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of another exciting episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. My name is Matt Baum, I’ve been your host, thank you for listening. And if you feel passionate about hemp and hemp education, I urge you to become a Ministry of Hemp insider by going to patrion.com\ministryofhemp and donating to our cause. Anything you can donate makes you an insider, it gets you all kinds of benefits like podcast extras. We recently just posted one where I’m talking to Nick Warrender from Urb about how they come up with the names for their pre-rolled hemp flower joints.

Matt Baum:
You can hear that interview with Nick in episode 36. It’s a fun little extra, but like I said, if you dig what we’re doing here, we could use your help and it really does help, and any amount you give makes you a Ministry of Hemp insider. Please, check it out. And if you have hemp questions, hit us up, (402) 819-4894, leave us a message. And like I said earlier, Kit O’Connell, the Editor-in-Chief of Ministry of Hemp and myself will answer your questions on our Q&A shows that we do, and we’ve got one coming up really soon, I promise.

Matt Baum:
I know I’ve been promising that a lot, but it is coming. If you’re too shy to call, email me, Matt, at Ministry of Hemp, shoot me your question and we’ll read it and talk about it. You can follow Ministry of Hemp at \Ministry of Hemp or at MinistryofHemp on all of your favorite social media platforms if you need more. And by the way, speaking of Kit O’Connell, head to ministryofhemp.com right now and you can meet Kit, our Editor-in-Chief, in a video that we just posted there.

Matt Baum:
Kit is a fantastic writer and a badass hemp advocate. I’m proud to call him a friend and I’m happy to work with him. Check it out, it’s a great video. Thanks again to everybody that has supported the show and donated and downloaded. It is your enthusiasm that keeps us spreading the good word and we ask that you do the same. Tell people about the show, tell people about the site. Let’s spread the good word of hemp and change the world, people, but for now, I got to get out of here. And I like to end the show by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum quarantined in Omaha, Nebraska, with the Ministry of Hemp, signing off.

The post Dr, Susan Trapp, Queen of Terpenes: Talking Terpene Science appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

With fresh New Year’s resolutions, many of us have pledged to start healthier habits. So, if you’re doing your due diligence to finally start eating healthier, you’ve come to the perfect place.

Today we’re giving you a simple recipe that fuses the nutritional goodness of oats with the superfood capacities of hemp and the benefits of CBD. We’ll also explain some of the health benefits from eating oats and hemp.

Bring the benefits of hemp and oats together in hemp oatmeal

Oats are some of the healthiest grains available. They provide health benefits like weight loss, lower blood sugar, and even reduce the risk of heart disease.

Having a balanced nutrient composition, oats are high in fiber and carbs, and are loaded with many important vitamins and minerals. Only half a cup of oats contains 51 grams of carbohydrates, 13 grams of protein, 5 grams of fat, 8 grams of fiber, with only 303 calories! This makes oats a super nutrient-dense food, providing you with a good ratio of nutrition to calories. In addition, oats are rich in antioxidants, can lower cholesterol levels, and lowers blood sugar. To add on to all of that, oats are very satiating and don’t require a lot to make you feel full.

Hemp, of course, is high in plant-based protein, contain good fats, and are also nutrient-dense. One ounce of hemp seeds contains nine grams of protein, twelve grams of fat, and two grams of fiber. It also contains all twenty amino acids and all nine of the essential amino acids which our bodies do not produce naturally.

Hemp is also extremely easy to incorporate into your diet through the use of hemp hearts (shelled hemp seeds) and hemp oil. We commonly sprinkle hemp hearts into our food and smoothies; you can even mix chia and flax seeds with hemp hearts to create a trifecta of plant-based nutrition.

CBD offers a wide-range of health benefits as well, most notably it’s anti-inflammatory properties and the calming effect it can have on your body. Coming in as an oil or tincture, it’s easily incorporated into liquids in your dishes or even in your water.

Ministry of Hemp’s Ultimate Hemp Oatmeal recipe

Serves: 1

Prep time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of oats
• 1 cup of almond milk
• 1 tablespoon brown-sugar
• 1 tablespoon shelled hemp hearts
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds
• 1 tablespoon flax seeds
• Fruit or berries and additional hemp hearts as a garnish
• Your favorite CBD tincture

Preparation

• dd all dry ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl
• Microwave for 2 minutes on high setting
• Top with more hemp seeds and mix in CBD tincture
• Can also top with fruits such as blueberries, bananas, or strawberries. We also love adding peanut butter.

The post Ultimate Hemp Oatmeal: Supercharge Your Mornings With Hemp appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt talks to Hilary Kelsay, CEO of Humming Hemp about their new hemp snack bars, adding hemp hearts and oil to your diet and the nutrition benefits of eating hemp. This is the latest part of our ongoing Women in Hemp series.

Then Matt shares his Spicy Fried Hemp Heart Shrimp recipe straight from the Ministry of Hemp test kitchen.

Recipe: Spicy Fried Shrimp with Hemp Hearts

Prep Time: about 60 minutes (frying time is variable)

Servings: Serves 2-4

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup yogurt or kefir, plain
2. 2 tsp Sri Racha or Sambal hot sauce (more if you like it spicy)
3. 1 cup hemp flour (or all-purpose flour)
4. 3 Tbsp of Humming Hemp Hemp Hearts (I used the spicy version)
5. 2 tsp salt and pepper
6. 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
7. 3 cups canola or peanut oil
8. Shrimp brine (2 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking soda)

Directions:

1. Shell shrimp and toss with shrimp brine, refrigerate for 15 minutes to an hour.
2. Heat oil in pot to 375 degrees.
3. Toss all dry ingredients together
4. Pour yogurt (whip with a little water to loosen) or kefir and hot sauce into a separate container and stir well.
5. Press shrimp lightly in paper towels to dry.
6. Dredge shrimp in the dry mixture, then into the wet mix, then back into the dry mixture and rest on parchment or glass pan.
7. In small groups fry the shrimp with a dry metal sieve or tongs until golden brown.
8. Remove and place on a paper towel to drain excess oil.
9. Enjoy!

Sponsored by Prima

This episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast is sponsored by Prima.

Prima has a full line of amazing CBD products. Our staff are a big fan of their CBD elixirs, easy drink mixes you can add to water, coffee, or your favorite refreshing beverage. Check put Prima Brain Fuel Elixir for the perfect way to start your day with some added focus.

We also recently teamed up with Prima to talk about the best natural sleep aids that could help you rest better.

Use coupon code ‘MINISTRY15’ for 15% off your complete order at Prima. Thanks again for sponsoring our podcast!

Send us your feedback!

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast

If you like what you hear be sure to subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbay, Stitcher, Pocketcasts, Google Play or your favorite podcast app.

Hemp hearts & healthy eating: Complete episode transcript

Below you will find the full written transcript of this episode:

Matt Baum: The Ministry of Hemp Podcast is brought to you by Prima. Prima has a whole line of amazing CBD products available at prima.co. Head over there and use the code MINISTRY15 for 15% off your purchase just for being a Ministry of Hemp listener. That’s prima.co. I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum: It’s officially mid January, so we find ourselves in the dog days of winter. And I don’t know if you’re like me, but one thing I like to do when it’s cold outside is stay home and cook. So I’ve had a lot of food on my mind lately, and today on the show, we’re going to talk to someone who wants to bring hemp into your kitchen in some really cool ways. Her name is Hilary Kelsay and she is the CEO of Humming Hemp. We’re going to talk to her about their Humming Hemp nutrition bars, their hemp hearts, their hemp oil, and so much more. And after that I’m even going to lay a little recipe on you that’ll teach you how to get some hemp into your own diet. But first, let’s get to my conversation with Hilary Kelsay.

Meeting Hilary Kelsay

Matt Baum: Tell me a little bit about you. You didn’t just start off as a CEO of a hemp startup. How did we get to hemp?

Hilary Kelsay: Right. So I am the wife of an American beekeeper and we own and operate a successful Pacific Northwest honey company called Humble Honeycomb. And it was through the honey company that I learned about hemp. I was at a trade show and this was in 2017, early 2017, and there were some American hemp farmers there. They just wanted to see if we could put our bees on their hemp fields to make hemp honey. And this conversation became quite an involved conversation. And then quick little fun tidbit, you can’t make honey out of industrial hemp because you need both pollen and nectar, and industrial hemp doesn’t quite supply that for a honey.

Matt Baum: Is that the issue of the hemp flower itself basically?

Hilary Kelsay: Right, right. So yeah, there’s not enough nectar. So the bees would be able to get some pollen, but there would be no nectar for the bees to take back to the hive.

Matt Baum: Sure. That makes sense.

Hilary Kelsay: These farmers just kept telling me about what they were doing and I was so moved by their entrepreneurial spirit and their forward thinking. And then they started telling me about all the nutritional benefits of hemp as a protein and Omega rich super food. Right? So I came home from this trade show to my beekeeper husband, and we have three kids under the age of five.

Matt Baum: Oh wow.

Hilary Kelsay: Yes, I’m a busy full-time mommy as well. I said, “Why would we not take American grown hemp to the market?” I said, “We already have the distribution network built because of the honey company. We already have the relationships. These people already know us. Why wouldn’t we package it and take it to market?” And he gave me the big double thumbs up and said, “You go do that. Let’s stay married. You go do that, and you make it big. Take it big. Make it go beyond the Pacific Northwest. And share your love with everybody.” So that’s what I did.

Matt Baum: Right if you find work basically, type stuff. Let me know if you find work and send money home.

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly, exactly.

Matt Baum: So from there you start Humming Hemp from there and you’re making these Hummingbars, as you call them. And I see one is honey and cinnamon. Are you using the same honey that your husband started making?

Hilary Kelsay: Well, we have a lot of honey connections, if you will. So it is because of our honey company that we are able to have such a great tasting bar. I would put it that way.

Matt Baum: Okay, fair enough.

Hilary Kelsay: But what we did initially is here in Richland, Washington, we have a great just entrepreneurial scene, and it’s just full of entrepreneurs. So I went out and talked to some of my friends and said, “Hey, you want to start a hemp company?” And they got very excited. And so I formed a team of local entrepreneurs here in Eastern Washington, and that’s exactly what we did.

Hilary Kelsay: And so how we started, we took what we called, at Humming Hemp, we call them our pantry staples because we love hemp so much, we want every American household to have hemp oil, hemp protein powder, and hemp hearts in their pantry to consume on a daily and weekly basis. Right?

Matt Baum: Sure.

Hilary Kelsay: And those products are awesome, but we all know that the household adoption rate of those products is still fairly low. So then it evolved to, okay, wow, we have this amazingly delicious, I’m speaking of hemp heart in particular, super food that people don’t know about. And if they do know anything about it, it’s pretty much misinformation. Right? And there’s just a very small tribe of us who really know it and understand it and are already eating it.

The nutritional power of hemp hearts

Matt Baum: So can we talk about the hemp heart for just a minute while we’re on the subject? Like what is it that you love about the hemp heart? And let’s talk about a little bit of misinformation and the real information.

Hilary Kelsay: I love that they are the most powerful and convenient super food on the market. So at Humming Hemp we’ve coined the phrase “powerful nutrition”. And what that really means is hemp’s got more protein per ounce than chicken, it’s got 10 times more iron per ounce than spinach, it’s got four times more potassium than chia seeds. You know, I don’t want to hack too bad on chia seeds, but they’re really trying to keep their super food status. And so they’re touting potassium right now. And it’s like, “Hello, hemp hearts have four times the potassium.” Right? And then let’s talk about the omega fatty acids, the most balanced omega fatty acids on planet earth with the perfect ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids.

Matt Baum: That’s that three to one ratio that is on your website. Right?

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly, right.

Matt Baum: Okay. The fact that there’s four times as much protein is chicken kind of blows my mind.

Hilary Kelsay: Oh, I know.

Matt Baum: I had no idea.

Hilary Kelsay: Right? And so if you look at the main food trends right now it’s plant based and it’s protein, and that’s everything hemp is, it’s a complete plant based protein and you don’t have to cook it. You don’t have to soak it like other seeds and nuts. You know, for the keto world, hemp hearts have 50% fewer carbs than almonds. And so what we’re really trying to show people, Americans that you can do, is that you can snack on hemp hearts straight out of the bag.

Matt Baum: Just like a nut.

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly. So we have two flavors of hemp hearts. We have a spicy and a honey Aleppo, and they’re in these, it’s a new brand block for us, if you will. Yeah. We encourage you to just literally snack on them with a spoon. They are so amazingly delicious, and they’re convenient and they’re versatile. The most convenient and versatile superfood there is.

Matt Baum: So what do I do with my hemp hearts? Let’s say I’m cooking, and I’ve got hemp hearts. I’ve got eight ounces of your hemp hearts, I’m looking at right now, like the plain ones. What can I do with these in my pantry?

Hilary Kelsay: You can sprinkle them on literally everything and make whatever you’re eating richer with nutrition and richer in taste.

Matt Baum: You’re adding protein, basically.

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah. Yep. You’re adding all of that protein and omegas.

Matt Baum: That’s very cool. So this would be something that if I were a vegan, I’m not, but let’s say I were, this would be a great place to add some protein to your diet basically.

Hilary Kelsay: Absolutely. And I am a vegan. Well, the biggest honey eating vegan there is.

Humming Hemp’s Hummingbars

Matt Baum: I don’t fault any vegans that eat honey. I’ve heard the arguments and I just don’t know where I come down on that. So now, let me ask you, everything you guys do is vegan, right, at Humming Hemp?

Hilary Kelsay: No. So let’s go back to that Hummingbar, speaking of not vegan. So we love hemp hearts and obviously I have a fond affection honey. And so we really started to pose the question and then answer it of, how do you take the most powerful, convenient, sustainable, we could stop there for second if you want to, sustainable super food on the planet, and put it in a form that Americans have already adopted, love eating and trust? Right? And for us, me being a busy mom of three kids under the age of five, it was a protein energy bar.

Matt Baum: Makes sense.

Hilary Kelsay: So we set out to deliver the most delicious and powerful nutrition bar we can. And what we did is we combined American grown hemp heart with raw USA honey.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Hilary Kelsay: And that’s the Hummingbar. So we have five great flavors, but the base of every single flavor is American grown hemp hearts and raw USA honey.

Matt Baum: So vegan, yes, but if you’re the kind of vegan that doesn’t eat honey, no.

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly.

Matt Baum: And I would argue if you’re that kind of vegan, you’re missing out. So I mean, you should be eating honey. It’s delicious.

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly. I know. It’s so good for you.

Matt Baum: So tell me about the hemp that you guys are using for the grains and the oils and whatnot. Are you growing this yourself or does this come from a local farm?

Hilary Kelsay: We are not. So we partner with a handful of small to medium American farmers who are growing industrial hemp specifically for food. Because there’s so many genetics out there for CBD and whatnot.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Hilary Kelsay: So these farms and [inaudible 00:10:25] are specifically for food.

Matt Baum: Okay. And the food based hemp that’s being grown, I mean, do they have to worry about THC levels, like everybody else, like the CBD market? Or is it the industrial stuff that’s food grade, is there something where you don’t have to worry about that at all because the CBD levels and THC levels are so low?

Hilary Kelsay: Well, I’m a big fan of not reinventing the wheel. And so our progressive neighbors to the north, Canada have been cultivating industrial hemp for two decades, right? 20 years. They just had their 20th year. They’ve grown it for food and textiles for a long time. And so the seeds and the genetics are there that are good and that are proven. And so that’s what we’re seeing a lot of our American farmers do, rather than maybe potentially get some bad seed out of Colorado or whatnot. We don’t want our farmers to take that risk and not have products that they can take to market.

Matt Baum: Absolutely. So the Hummingbars themselves, I’m going to guess these are your biggest sellers. They look really slick.

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah. So we literally launched those, so all of 2018 with me in my kitchen with my kids, eating them, copious amounts of test Hummingbars. And then we finalized our recipes and formulations and commercialized them at the very end of 2018. Did our first production run at the beginning of 2019, in January. And then in March, just two months later in early March of 2019 we launched the Hummingbar at Expo West down in Anaheim, California. We came out of Expo West with national distribution with Kroger as well as a handful of a few other small chains across the country. And then from there it’s just been a big snowball effect and we are so excited.

Matt Baum: So should I think about, like this Hummingbar, should I think about it the way I would think of like a Clif bar or a Larabar? Something I can throw in my bag when I’m going on a bike ride or something I can have after the gym? Is it the same type of idea?

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah, it truly is the anytime bar, same exact idea, right? You’re going to put it in your gym bag, the busy mom’s going to rip it open in the middle of the grocery store when her screaming kids are screaming. It’s that good for you, permissible snack that is absolutely delicious and you can know, no matter who you are or what you’re doing, that it is good for every single cell in your body, right? So if you’re the male cyclist, it’s for you. If you’re the teenage girl, it’s for you. If you’re my three year old toddler, it’s for you. If you’re the busy mom, it’s for you. I mean, no matter who you are, the Hummingbar is for you and it is delicious.

Matt Baum: And it’s gluten free, so you really don’t have to worry about any food additives or food allergies either. There’s no nuts and no gluten. Right?

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly. Exactly. It’s free from most of the main allergens. We are processed in the facility that also processes peanuts, so that’s always a concern for folks. But it’s part of that. I mean, our honey cinnamon literally only has four ingredients: American grown hemp heart, raw USA honey, and then cinnamon and sea salt. And that’s it. And so our bars range from four ingredients up to technically nine ingredients, our pumpkin seed and spice, we have to literally lists all the different spices that make up pumpkin spice. But the core of every bar is minimal ingredients that you know, that you have already been eating, that you trust, you can pronounce. There’s nothing added and nothing fortified. All of the macro and micronutrients come from the ingredients themselves.

Using hemp protein powder

Matt Baum: That’s very cool. Tell me about the hemp protein powder. Is this the same type of thing that I’m thinking like, I’m making a smoothie because I’m going to the gym, I would add a hemp protein powder instead of some weird GNC muscle guy powder or something?

Hilary Kelsay: Exactly, yes. So it is green, it is raw. It is sustainable. It’s rich, nutty, and nutritious tasting. And it is so, so good for you. Not everybody’s a fan of the hempy, earthy, grassy taste of hemp. But if you do like it or if you can get past it, it’s one of the cleanest, most sustainable protein sources on the planet.

Matt Baum: See, personally I really like it so I don’t have a problem with any of the tinctures I’ve tried or the powders that I’ve added to things, it doesn’t bother me. It’s got almost got like a tea type flavor to it and I kind of like that.

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah, I like it too. People are always like, “What does it taste like?” You know, hemp in general. And I’m like, “Well, it tastes like a sunflower seed and a pine nut had a super baby.”

Matt Baum: That’s a really good description. That is an excellent description. I’m going to steal that from you. That’s good.

Hilary Kelsay: And they’re like, “Oh, I love pine nuts.” And I’m like, “Oh, you’ll love hemp.” And then lo and behold, they do.

Matt Baum: Lot cheaper than pine nuts too. You don’t have to go out to the forest and find them. You know, it’s incredible.

Sponsored by Prima

Matt Baum: Let’s take a quick break to hear about our sponsor this week, Prima, they’re over@prima.co on the internet, and they have a full line of amazing CBD products with free shipping on orders over $75 and a free 30-day return guarantee. The good people of Prima were nice enough to send me some of their new beverage infusion samples. There’s one for the morning, one for noon and one for night. I have been making a daily regimen of the brain fuel one before I go to work, and I got to say, I really like it. It’s not sweet. It’s got a nice sort of earthy almost tea flavor to it. You can pour it in your water or your coffee, give it a stir and it dissolves almost instantly, and the effects hit you pretty fast. I’ve really liked it so far. And they also have one that is for resting easy, if you have trouble sleeping. And they have another one that’s just called The GoTo for your normal daily homeostasis. I got to say, I am a really big fan.

Matt Baum: And they have some really cool technology behind it too. If you’ve been listening to the show, you know that CBD bonds with oil very well, but oil does not bond with water very well. This new powdered CBD that they offer makes the cannabinoids in CBD that you’re trying to get much more bioavailable, and that is what’s really important, optimal bioavailability. If you like this show and you want to support Ministry of Hemp, please head over to prima.co, check out their whole line of CBD infused skincare and their new powdered elixirs. Head to prima.co now and use the code MINISTRY15, that’s MINISTRY15, no space, for 15% off your purchase. And any purchase over $75 gets free shipping and free 30-day returns.

Matt Baum: We’re big fans of Prima here at Ministry of Hemp, so much so that we are going to have them on the show very soon. Head over to prima.co that’s P-R-I-M-A.co, and shop their whole line of skincare, therapeutic body care and wellness essentials made for the whole you. At Primo, it’s all good.

Using hemp seed oil for healthy eating

Matt Baum: So tell me about the hemp oil. So this is also made from the seeds. It’s extracted from there.

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah. So the pantry staples. So we covered the hemp hearts, right? So those are shelled hemp seeds. So think sunflower seed is what I like to tell people, the hard outer shell is removed and what remains in the hemp world is called a hemp heart. And then we just covered the hemp protein powder. So that too is a raw straight out of the farm field hemp product. It’s just ground into a protein powder.

Matt Baum: So this is the only one that you really doing anything with, you’re expressing the seeds basically.

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah, but it’s all cold pressed. No solvents, no chemicals. So it’s just straight out of the farm field, it’s just a different process, right? We didn’t shell it into heart, we didn’t grind it into a protein powder, we’re cold pressing it into an oil. And hemp oil has a smoke point of 300 degrees Fahrenheit. So it’s not a cooking oil. It’s a low temperature finishing oil or a supplement. So we have a little eight ounce bottle that people use for omega supplementing. So we have a lot of that in the natural channel. And then the more conventional grocery store channels love our 375 milliliter glass bottle, and it sits in the conventional oil set, and people like to use it for bread dipping with balsamic, for drizzling on soups. It makes amazing salad dressing.

Matt Baum: That’s exactly whre I was going to go with that. You can make a salad dressing with a benefit as opposed to just putting olive oil or canola oil, which is just going to make you a little fat, you know?

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah. No, it’s so true. And then my husband’s favorite use of it is he uses it instead of butter on his popcorn, he pops a bag of popcorn and then he tops it with our flavored hemp hearts and hemp oil. And it is absolutely delicious.

Matt Baum: That sounds excellent. What kind of flavor does the hemp oil have? Is it very neutral?

Hilary Kelsay: You know, I love it because it’s like Frankenstein green and then it’s pretty nutty.

Matt Baum: Okay, that sounds delicious. Similar to like a sunflower seed oil?

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah.

Matt Baum: Okay. That makes sense. Now let me ask you, you’ve talked a lot about the nutrition and whatnot, do you come from a nutrition background? How did you get interested in this?

Hilary Kelsay: I think nutrition ha just always been in my DNA. I’m a big believer and always have been that food is medicine. Everything we choose to put in our bodies affects every cell in our body. Now, don’t get me wrong, we just all came off the holiday season and we all indulged. And I’m also a firm believer in eat, drink and be merry as well. But on a day to day basis, I’ve always been very mindful of what I put in my mouth and how I’m fueling my body, and preventative maintenance, if you will. And now even more so that I’m a mama of three little babies, you know, it’s like I want to be around for a long time, and so if I eat good and have good nutrition, I can avoid a lot of illness in my life and be there for my loved ones.

Matt Baum: Absolutely. So let me ask you, where do I go to get this? You said you had a deal with Kroger. I know we have a Kroger here. I’m in Nebraska and we have Kroger here. How far have you penetrated outside of the West Coast?

Hilary Kelsay: Oh my goodness, we are all over. So our Kroger distribution is national. So just get on our website, find a location closest to you. If for some reason we’re not close to you, you can always purchase at humminghemp.com. But I mean, we’re down in the Carolinas, we’re in Colorado, we’re in the Pacific Northwest, we’re in Northern California. We’re all over. And 2020 is definitely going to be another year of rapid growth for us.

Matt Baum: Awesome!

Hilary Kelsay: Yeah, we’re excited.

Focusing on hemp nutrition

Matt Baum: Speaking of growth, have you guys felt any pushback? Like a lot of the CBD farmers or CBD companies that I’ve talked to had experienced serious pushback with their local government and senate. But you’re one of the first people I’ve talked to this dealing with hemp as a food item. Did you have any of the same headaches?

Hilary Kelsay: We haven’t. We haven’t. Right. So again, we’re just leveraging what Canada’s been doing for 20 years and I’m using it for our company as a launch pad forward. Right? They’ve already paved the way. Manitoba Harvest is literally in every grocery store across the country. Our products are now sitting side by side theirs. You know, I’m an Oregonian, I’m in Washington now obviously, but Bob’s Red Mill carries hemp hearts and stuff. So you have these big, proven, trusted food companies that have hemp in their lineup. And so we’re just following right behind them and we haven’t had push back.

Hilary Kelsay: The other thing we are choosing to do is, we drew a firm line in the sand and said, “Okay, CBD is awesome. It’s bright, it’s shiny.” Us CEOs get distracted by shiny objects, right, that can be exciting and make us money. And we’ve just had to say, you know, “This is who we are as Humming Hemp. These are our core values. We’re all about food and nutrition and how hemp…” Because for us that’s the definition of him for our company is that powerful nutrition. And so we said, “We’re not going to cross the line and start putting CBD in our food or any of that. Even if there’s part of the market that wants that, we’re not going to do it, so that we can avoid the FDA push back.” There’s other companies that are doing that, that are on the front lines paving the way and I’m happy they are. And we watch them and we respect them, but for us that wasn’t the move we wanted to make.

Matt Baum: It sounds like you’re saving yourself a serious headache. So good for you.

Hilary Kelsay: I know, I know. One of the things I love too is just our whole message that hemp is literally for everyone. Right?

Matt Baum: Right.

Hilary Kelsay: So whether you’re already a Birkenstock wearing stereotypical hempy hempster, or just whoever you are, it’s for you, right? If your favorite food is macaroni and cheese, hemp is still for you, just top your macaroni and cheese with him hearts, it’s delicious.

Matt Baum: Yeah. Instead of breadcrumbs. There you go.

Hilary Kelsay: Right, right, have your carbs and put some hemp on it.

Matt Baum: And way better for you, yeah.

Hilary Kelsay: On our website we have a picture of an ice cream cone being topped with hemp hearts, and everybody’s like, “Oh, this just seems so contradictory. Why do you have an ice cream cone?” And it’s like, “No, this is who we are. You are going to be who you are and you’re going to eat what you want to eat, but you can always make it more powerful and more nutritious and delicious by adding hemp to it.”

Matt Baum: Sure. I mean, just because it’s ice cream doesn’t mean it can’t also be good for you. I mean, sure, I love rolling ice cream in peanuts or whatever. And think of all those new places that you go to where they have the rolled ice cream and they’re stuffing it. What if you put something that was delicious and good for you in it? I mean, it just makes sense. We don’t need to stick cigarettes in our ice cream to make it more delicious. I mean, come on.

Hilary Kelsay: I like it. I like it.

Matt Baum: Hilary, thank you for coming on the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. You obviously have a real passion for this.

Hilary Kelsay: Hemp can change the world. I want to one day fix world hunger with hemp, and I really think we could.

Matt Baum: I don’t disagree. I think you’re right on. Well, awesome, Hilary. Thank you so much.

Hilary Kelsay: Thank you.

Matt Baum: I don’t want to take up anymore of your time. You’ve got babies and bees, and a farm, and a husband. My god, I can’t imagine.

Matt Baum: If you’d like to add some hemp to your diet or try the Humming Hemp bars, you can find links to Humming Hemp and Humble Honey Company in the show notes for this episode.

Cooking with hemp hearts

Matt Baum: Kelsay was nice enough to send me a whole box full of their samples and there’s a bunch of great stuff in there including their hemp hearts. And so I figured, why not get them out and mess around in my kitchen with them. And I did just that. The other night I made a red curry for my wife and I, I took some red curry paste and some coconut milk and made the curry base. Not going full in there. But I did dry roast some sweet potatoes and some onions as well. Dry roasting is great because you don’t cover anything in oil, so you’re not masking any flavor, and the flavors of the sweet potato and the onion really come out. And when you do introduce them into the curry, they just soak it up like a sponge. Absolutely delicious. But for the final element of this curry, I wanted to add a little crunch. So I decided to try a take on an old fried shrimp recipe that I used to use at one of the restaurants I worked at.

Matt Baum: Step one when you want to make any shrimp dish is to brine your shrimp. It’s quick and it’s easy, and it makes for an amazing finished product. Basically, if you’ve got a pound of shrimp, you’re looking at about a teaspoon of salt and a fourth teaspoon of baking powder, and just toss it together, give it a good whisk, throw it in the fridge for 15 minutes and up to an hour. You’re going to have nice crunchy shrimp in the end.

Matt Baum: Next up, we’re going to set up a basic dredging station. Dredging basically means you have your liquid and then you have your dry ingredient that you’re going to coat your protein with. In this case, we’re going to take a cup of either yogurt or kefir, which is like a yogurt liquid. Make sure that you’re using plain. We don’t want flavored yogurt here. If you have to use regular yogurt, that’s fine. You can whip it until it breaks down consistency a little bit and you can even add just a little bit of water if you need to if you think it’s not thin enough. Now, I fully believe in seasoning every step of the dredging process, so I like to add a little sriracha or you could use sambal, both of which are Asian hot sauces that are going to just lift the flavor and add a little bit of spice in the end.

Matt Baum: Next up, we get together our dry ingredients. So we’re going to go for one cup of hemp flour. Now if you don’t have hemp flour, you can use normal all purpose flour as well, but we’re trying to get hemp in our diet here. Then I added three tablespoons of the Humming Hemp spicy hemp hearts, because I love spicy, directly to the flour, along with a tablespoon of pepper and a tablespoon of salt. You want to mix that real well. The whisk is perfect for this.

Matt Baum: Now it’s time to dredge the shrimp. And you want to start with a dry product, so if they’re still a little moist, throw them between some paper towels, give them a nice little pap, don’t squeeze them too hard, we’re not trying to destroy them. From there, the shrimp go into the flour, hemp heart, salt and pepper mixture. I like to use a small sieve to shake off the excess, and then I drop them directly into the yogurt. From there, a different sieve scoops them up, I drain off the extra yogurt, and back into the dry mixture for one more coating. Again, shake off the excess and then you can either transfer them to a glass baking dish or some parchment paper.

Matt Baum: Now it’s time to fry our shrimp. So I use a small pot with about three cups of canola oil over a medium flame until it gets up to about 375 degrees. A candy thermometer is really good for testing a temperature like this. But if you don’t have access to one of those, you can dip your fingers into your dredging liquid and then into your flour mixture, wad up a little ball of that and drop it in the oil. If it starts sizzling, you know you’re at a good cooking temperature.

Matt Baum: You don’t want to fry the shrimp in too large of batches because they can stick together, they won’t all cook at the same time. So just make sure you go a few at a time. Watch as they start to brown up, and when they do, use that same sieve that you were using to shake off the excess dry ingredients, and scoop them out and set them on a paper towel lined plate so they can drain any excess oil. Keep in mind you’re using hot oil here, so you want to make sure that your sieve is metal and that it’s not wet, otherwise you’re going to get snapping and popping.

Matt Baum: Now if you have an air fryer, you can probably skip all of this and just throw the shrimp in the air fryer after they’ve been dredged. I haven’t had a chance to try it in mine yet, but I assume it’s probably still pretty delicious. Once all your shrimp are fried, they are ready to eat, and they’re going to be absolutely delicious. The hemp hearts adds this amazing crunch. Like I said, I served this with a red curry over rice and I just dropped the fried shrimp right on top for a nice little crunch. Not only did the spicy hemp hearts add some nutty, crunchy goodness, they made the dish more nutritious too. They’re definitely a healthier ingredient than the corn meal that I would’ve normally used to fry the shrimp.

Matt Baum: I’ll be sure to include my recipe for spicy hemp heart fried shrimp in the notes for this episode, which you can find at ministryofhemp.com.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum: That about does it for this episode of Ministry of Hemp Podcast. Huge thanks to Hilary Kelsay for coming on the show. And I would love to hear from you about your ideas about getting him into your diet. You can always shoot me a message at matt:ministryofhemp.com if you want to send me an email. Or you can follow us on Twitter @MinistryOfHemp. And of course hit us on Facebook/ministryofhemp. By the way, you can give us a call if you’ve got questions: (402) 819-6417 is the Ministry of Hemp phone line, and we love to answer your questions on the show, so please give us a call. At the Ministry of Hemp we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everybody, so you can find a complete written transcript of this episode in the show notes at ministryofhemp.com. While you’re there at ministryofhemp.com be sure to sign up for our newsletter so you can be the first to hear about all the cool articles that Kit and the gang are throwing up online.

Matt Baum: Next time on the show, I hope you’re still hungry because we are talking CBD and chocolate. But right now it’s time for me to get out of here. So this is Matt Baum reminding you, take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast signing off.

The post Hemp Hearts & Healthy Eating: Talking With Hilary Kelsay of Humming Hemp appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Today we’re here with Drew and she’s going to show us one of her favorite recipes, a tasty and fresh summer hemp seed salad!

Thanks to the power of hemp seeds, this is is an easy and quick meal packed full of omega 3 & 6 fatty acids, as well as other essential nutrients. This hemp seed salad also makes a great base for other ingredients. You can easily add more protein, like tofu, nuts, eggs or chicken, depending on whether you want a vegan salad.

With this recipe, we focused on fresh vegetables that are in season right now in Central Texas. You can pick some great vegetables that are in season where you live, too.

Have an idea for a recipe? Let us know in the comments!

Easy Hemp Seed Salad Recipe

Prep time: about 20 minutes

Servings: Serves 2 or more

Ingredients

For Salad

• Arugula lettuce
• Strawberries
• Carrots
• Radishes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Ripe avocado
• Hemp hearts
• Sunflower seeds

For dressing

• Olive oil
• Apple cider vinegar
• Salt & Pepper
• Fresh lime juice

Preparation

• Chop lettuce and slice other ingredients into bite-sized pieces. Dice avocado into cubes.
• Combine salad ingredients in a bowl, adding at least 2 tablespoons of hemp hearts and mixing well.
• Mix olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper, and fresh-squeezed lime juice in a bowl. Whisk or stir well with a fork.
• Add dressing to salad and serve immediately.

The post Easy Hemp Seed Salad: Fresh & Tasty Hemp Recipe appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the UK’s first CBD restaurant.

The Canna Kitchen opened in late 2018 in Brighton. It was an instant success with local diners and received acres of press coverage in major publications all over the world. Since then, things have taken a dramatic turn.

According to news reports, on Wednesday, May 8th, the venue was raided by the police. They seized a substantial amount of herbal cannabis. There were no arrests, though one man was interviewed under police caution.

We wanted to get to the bottom of what happened, and also find out how the UK’s hemp industry reacted.

FROM A SUCCESSFUL START TO A RAID BY THE POLICE

The next day, the restaurant released a statement through its Facebook page. The owners thanked people for their support and explained they were closing while they take legal advice.

“The products that we sell are no different to those which are sold by many, many companies all over the UK.”

Sam Evolution, Founder of The Canna Kitchen

The owners of Canna Kitchen say the product seized at the premises is industrial hemp which is legally imported. They affirmed that all their products for sale are legal. “Our products are defined as industrial hemp, and are clearly and transparently imported as such, with all taxes and duties paid,” they said. They added that their products are “in line with UK legal guidelines for pharmaceutical definitions.”

Explaining the ramifications for the UK CBD industry, they went on to say “If trace elements of THC render these products illegal, then by default all CBD products must be illegal in the UK. This would mean that many large high street chains are currently breaking the law.”

To find out more about what this means for CBD and hemp in the UK, we spoke to a number of figures in the UK CBD industry. However, the majority were unwilling to speak on the record about such a delicate subject.

WHAT DO OTHERS IN THE UK CBD INDUSTRY THINK?

One of the few people to agree to comment was Guy Coxall. A leading figure in UK cannabis and hemp circles, Coxall is the compliance director at CTA UK, a non-profit dedicated to supporting CBD, cannabis and hemp businesses. While you might expect him to be critical of the police in this case, his response was quite the opposite.

“Having assessed the media coverage around Canna Kitchen, it seems that they have irresponsibly flouted the laws on multiple levels,” he said. Some reasons he listed included “importing whole flower, suspected use of isolates in food and medical claims.”

Coxall also criticized The Canna Kitchen’s response to the raids.

“The worst offence, in my opinion, is that once caught, they tried to cover their own backs by implying that the entire CBD industry is illegal,” he said. “When there are approximately 1.2 million people in the UK who regularly use CBD products, their attitude of ‘If we go down then we will take everyone else’ is disturbing and shocking.”

He opts for a conciliatory approach with the authorities, in a bid to keep things above board and strictly within the law.

“Those of us who work hard for this industry, strive to keep CBD products available by working alongside the regulatory bodies. The whole industry needs to unite and self-regulate to ensure its future. For the past few years we have been winning a good fight but irresponsible companies such as Canna Kitchen make this increasingly more difficult.”

UK CBD INDUSTRY DIVIDED OVER CANNA KITCHEN RAIDS

“They tried to cover their own backs by implying that the entire CBD industry is illegal.”

Guy Coxall, UK hemp advocate

In response, Sam Evolution, the founder of Canna Kitchen, stated that all their actions were firmly within the law.

“We received police and trading standards approval on all the products we sell. Products which are legally imported into the country have been signed off by customs with full clearance after duties and VAT have been paid,” he said.

He refutes many of Guy Coxall’s points. “We have never used CBD isolate in any of our food, and we don’t stock it,” said Evolution.

“We’re very careful not to make any medical claims about our products and services, due to the fact that we are not trained medical professionals. The products that we sell are no different to those which are sold by many, many companies all over the UK.”

THE UK CBD INDUSTRY IS IN A DELICATE STATE

Ian Fox, who runs the CBD Coffee Lounge in Manchester, was also willing to go on the record. Fox’s thriving cafe-shop business sells CBD products, hot drinks, and CBD-infused edibles. While disheartened about the news, like Coxall, he took a dim view of Canna Kitchen’s actions.

“It’s very dismaying to hear this news about Canna Kitchen, but it doesn’t come as a surprise,” said Fox. “I was talking to some friends today who are CBD suppliers, and they were angry at the actions of the owner of Canna Kitchen, for potentially jeopardising the trade for everyone else, through what could be deemed to be reckless actions.”

With his own business, Fox takes a more cautious approach, aware that while the UK CBD industry is in its infancy pushing the boundaries could lead to increased scrutiny.

“I’ve always been concerned right from the very beginning that we could get a visit,” he said. “So I’m still not selling CBD flower and I’m also reluctant to do more edibles at the moment.”

Fox also pointed out that Canna Kitchen had been advertising a ‘THC night’ on their website. When asked about this, Evolution explained that in this instance ‘THC’ is an acronym for ‘The Herbal Chef,’ AKA Chris Sayeh, who flew over to host a five course CBD-infused dining experience. However, events and promotions like this could be seen as blurring the lines between the illegal and legal elements of hemp — something industry representatives such as Coxall regard as reckless.

DID CANNA KITCHEN DO ANYTHING WRONG?

On the other hand, it could be argued that Canna Kitchen have done nothing overtly wrong, apart from engaging in some creative marketing. And if this raises awareness of CBD among the public, demystifying the properties of hemp, is that such a bad thing?

One thing’s for sure, it’s a thorny issue, causing divisions across the industry. The legal case against Evolution and Canna Kitchen is ongoing. It threatens to have major implications for the UK CBD industry so we’ll be keeping a close eye on the outcome.

Of course, this case doesn’t exist in isolation, and the current upheaval in UK politics could play a part too.

As Ian Fox points out, “A lot of us in the industry are hoping that there’ll be a change of government soon and that could potentially bring about much-awaited change and bring an end to these draconian laws.”

Wishful thinking? With the current state of the UK government, and the unstoppable rise of the worldwide CBD and cannabis industry, anything’s possible.

Correction 6/12/2019: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that there was an arrest during the raid on The Canna Kitchen. There were no arrests.

The post The Canna Kitchen Raided: Why Did UK Police Raid CBD Eatery? appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.