by Chris Conrad
Hempseed is a versatile food item. Sprouting any raw seed improves its nutritional value. It also improves digestibility, increases the mass, and facilitates handling, since the hulls split and can be removed with water agitation. One pound of seed will yield three pounds of sprout. Even sterilized hempseed will sprout, although it will not germinate and grow into a viable plant. Hempseed sprouts can be used like any other seed sprout, in salads, stir-fries, or sandwiches. Like soybean, hempseed extracts can be made into vegetable milk, which mixes well nutritionally with soy milk. From soy milk one could make tofu, frozen dessert, cheese, or hundreds of other products. It can be solidified, texturized, and spiced to taste like chicken, beef, or pork. Hempseed can also be ground into meal, cooked like oatmeal or cream of wheat, then sweetened with milk, raisins, nuts, and dried fruits. Hempseed can be further ground into a margarine, common in Russia, that is similar to peanut butter but has a more delicate flavor. The seeds are roasted, seasoned, and eaten as a snack. Roasted and ground seeds can be baked into breads, cakes, pancakes, cookies, and casseroles. Some recipes appear later in this book.
If there is no THC in hempseed, what is in there? The Ohio Hempery had a lab assay done to find out. They learned that the seed is a combination of protein, carbohydrate, fatty acids, moisture, and ash. In combination, these provide dietary fiber, carotene, and a variety of vitamins, including B1, B2, B3, B6, C, and E. About 35 percent of the seed is dietary fiber, which includes most of the protein, all the ash, and some of the fatty acids. About 35 percent of the total seed is fatty acids in the form of a viscous oil. Another 25 percent is made up of amino acids, or protein.6
There are eight proteins that are essential to life that the human body cannot make, and two others which the body cannot make in sufficient quantity. These compounds must be consumed in their natural form. The complete protein in hempseed gives the human body all the essential amino acids required to maintain health. It provides amino acids in the necessary types and amounts the body needs to make serum albumin and serum globulins, such as the immune-enhancing gamma globulin antibodies—the body’s first line of defense.7 Just a handful of hempseed provides this minimum daily nutrition for adults, and a bag full of it would provide all the essential protein, oils, and dietary fiber necessary for an adult to survive for two weeks, although it is unlikely to assuage their hunger.
What’s in a Hempseed?
Source: The Ohio Hempery
The protein in hemp is more digestible than soy protein. Part of the reason for this is the presence of edestin. Hempseed protein is about 65 percent edestin, a sturdy protein that is pure, easy to prepare, and highly stable.8 Edestin is so complete and nutritious that studies done in the early 1900s demonstrated that it could serve as the sole source of protein in the diet of animals.9 The protein does not coagulate at room temperature, and is soluble in dilute salt solutions, unless it has been changed by a long period of exposure to heat. Unfortunately, federal law requires that all hempseed brought into the United States must be sterilized, and steaming is the most common method currently being used to destroy the seed’s inner vitality. There are facilities around the country that receive the imported viable seed under customs bond, steam it at 212°F for 15 minutes, then issue a certificate of sterilization and release it to the consignee. This may slightly damage the edestin, making it less soluble in salt water and therefore less digestible. However, sterilized hempseed is still quite nutritious and people often roast or boil it before eating. This decision represents a trade-off between taste and benefit, but with hempseed—as with most vegetables—less cooking is better, nutritionally.
IN PURSUIT OF GOOD DIETARY FATS
We live in an age when the very idea of consuming fat is chastised and reviled. However, fats are a very concentrated source of energy and enhance the flavor of foods. It is important to recognize that, just like laws and people, there are good fats and there are bad fats. While overconsuming bad fats leads to obesity, cholesterol, and heart problems, consuming good fats helps ensure good health and a fortified immune system. The trick is knowing which is which.
Saturated fats, animal fats, and hydrogenated vegetable oils are bad fats. Essential fatty acid (EFA) is good fat. Raw hempseed oil is among the lowest in saturated fats, at just 8 percent of total oil volume. Instead, it has a lot of linoleic acid (LA), a type of EFA that is readily available in sesame, safflower, sunflower, and other commercial vegetable seed oils. LA, or omega-6, is related to oleic acid, linolenic acid (LNA), or omega-3, and gamma-linoleic acid (GLA). Researcher Lynn Osburn reports that “Hempseed is the highest in essential fatty acids of any plant. It contains all the essential amino acids and essential fatty acids needed to maintain healthy human life. No other single source provides complete protein in such an easily digestible form. No other plant has the oils essential to life in as perfect a ratio for human health and vitality.” Hempseed oil content ranges from 51 to 62 percent LA, and from 19 to 25 percent LNA. Only flax oil has more linolenic acid, at 58 percent, but hempseed oil is still the highest in total essential fatty acid content, up to 81 percent of total oil volume.10
The exact proportion of individual EFAs in the seed is a variable. A nutritionally optimal three-to-one ratio of LA to LNA has been described for the long-term maintenance of good health. Hempseed oil contains anywhere from this ideal ratio down to about two-to-one. Dr. Andrew Weil, a long-time advocate of the use of flaxseed oil as a source of dietary EFA, found that hempseed has about 16 percent more total EFA than does flaxseed. Another advantage described by Weil is that hempseed oil has a good-tasting “nutty” flavor, whereas flaxseed oil made some of his patients gag. After two years of using flaxseed oil as a dietary supplement, researcher Udo Erasmusrealized that he had developed “thin, papery-feeling skin that dried out and cracked easily.” Other people developed similar conditions in as few as ten months of using only flaxseed oil. Erasmus attributed this to an imbalance caused by relying on flaxseed oil for his EFA supplement. Potential problems from long-term ingestion of oils like flaxseed, which are too rich in omega-3 LNA, might ultimately include symptoms such as inflammation in arthritis or immunosuppression. On review, Erasmus noted that hempseed, with its higher proportion of omega-6 LA, may hold nature’s “most perfectly balanced oil.”11
Gamma-linoleic acid (GLA), a particularly rare oil, is so beneficial to human growth and development that it is a component in the milk of nursing mothers. LNA has repeatedly been found effective in human studies for lowering cholesterol, but GLA is even more potent.12 The body converts common LA into GLA by means of an enzyme, to protect itself from arthritis, premenstrual syndrome, and other conditions. Unfortunately, many factors in our diet can impair this ability, including the consumption of alcoholic beverages, processed vegetable oils, excess cholesterol, and heated cooking oils. In the decades since the suppression of industrial hemp cultivation, Americans have been able to obtain GLA only by consuming borage, black currant, or evening primrose seed oils to supplement their diet.14 Today, hempseed is once again a readily available GLA source. Unfortunately, the oil is expensive due to the artificial economic restraint caused by the ban on producing domestic hemp.
Percent of Fatty Acids in Health Oils13
CARING FOR YOUR HEMPSEED OIL
One problem associated with keeping a regular supply of hempseed oil is that it, like most high-quality vegetable oils, is structurally fragile. In the shell, seed oils endure for more than a year without major loss of nutritional value. However, hempseed oil’s optimum refrigerated shelf life is less than two months after the seed has been pressed or the sealed container opened. Cold press is best suited for eating, while a hot press or chemical extraction may be appropriate for industrial applications. Food preparation affects nutritional quality, too. Cooking the delicate oil destroys much of its natural value. The smoke point of hempseed oil is 165°C, the flash point is 141°C, and the melting point is minus 8°C. Storing it too long at any temperature will result in its going r
ancid. Oil rancidity is a health risk. The measure of rancidity is how much peroxide and other toxic oxidation products have formed in the oil, called Peroxide Value (PV) and expressed as a number of milli-equivalents per kilogram. It usually should be less than 10 PV. Caution is advisable. An easy test that is fairly reliable is to smell the raw hempseed oil. It should have a mild aroma. If it has a very strong or bitter smell, or taste that bites the tongue, the oil should only be used for topical uses, such as massage.
Given the recent growth in the hempseed oil market, there may be new advances in maintaining freshness in the near future. In the meantime, to maximize the nutritional benefit and minimize risk of spoilage, use fresh oils taken by cold press, and use as little heat as possible in preparing foods. Keep the oil and the seeds out of sunlight, store in a cool, dark place, and don’t wait too long to use it.
GOOD FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS
We are living in a world of hunger. Some 75 percent of Central American children under the age of five are undernourished. A child dies every 2.3 seconds as a result of malnutrition, according to the UNICEF report, State of the World’s Children. Some 38,000 children starve to death every day. Twenty million children die of malnutrition every year, according to the Institute for Food and Development Policy. The numbers are growing daily.
Wealthy nations, when they have done anything at all, temporarily ship grains from their food surplus. This does nothing to fix the problem. There’s a better alternative to consider: give people a permanent food crop they can grow themselves. Hempseed can feed the hungry masses. It requires less attention than soy and less fuel to produce. It will grow in almost any climate where there is need, providing an easily obtained, high-quality source of protein.
Hempseed’s nutritional benefits are not limited to humanity. It could also be used to feed poultry and livestock for a more ecologically sound base to the food chain. Even the “seed cake” left over from pressing the seed oil is edible—a virtually free source of animal feed derived from a crop that was raised for an entirely different purpose. Studies show that feeding hempseed to birds helps “bring back the feathers and improve the birds.”15 The seed is mixed with crushed, dried nettles and added to chicken feed during the winter to increase egg production.16 As in the air, so in the water. “Fishes love this plant, and fly to it,” wrote one Englishman, describing its use as bait.17
Apparently, no one can resist the healthy hempseed.
Chapter 12
Holistic Health and Hemp
Most of the useful medicinal compounds in cannabis are not psychoactive, such as CBD and CBG. The federal government denies that they are active marijuana compounds because it officially recognizes THC as the only drug in cannabis. Hence, the others fall into a category of hemp products that are not technically marijuana. Three other health factors fall outside the definition of marijuana, too: nutrition, hygiene, and environment. Hempseed is important to maintaining proper nutritional balance and to bolstering the immune system. Hemp gives us antibacterial compounds and cleaning agents. Hemp fiber offers critical medical supplies such as slings and bandaging. But the economic and ecological benefits rising from the large-scale development of industrial hemp may ultimately prove to be this plant’s greatest gift to health—individual, societal, even planetary. Wildlife consume hempseed, and the growing plants add air to the soil and oxygen to the air, so simply sowing cannabis and letting it grow wild is a good way to help the planet. Consider, then, the holistic health benefits of fully developing industrial hemp as a restorative natural resource.
ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS HEALTH
Nature has been the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” for humanity since the industrial revolution hit in the early eighteenth century. It takes simple common sense to recognize that if a chemical kills bugs, plants, and animal pests, it probably kills people, too. Chief Seattle gave his ominous warning to the United States Congress in 1854: “Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Each new life form that is lost, estimated at one thousand species per year, and each local ecosystem that is destroyed gives another warning that we are in a global environmental crisis. The subtle interconnections of planetary chemistry and personal well-being make it difficult to pinpoint a simple cause for the complex syndrome of health problems that arise from a deteriorated environment. However, ample direct linkages have been established over the years, such as cancers caused by pesticides and toxic wastes.
Frogs in Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and even as far away as Vermont and Quebec, Canada, have recently shown an alarming rise in mutations and deformities. Researchers suspect that the cause is some sort of water pollution caused by airborne contaminants, possibly including pesticides and heavy metals. The implication for human populations is frightening, also. In the wetland where the anomalies were first noticed in large numbers, virtually every household has at least one cancer patient, according to the local middle-school teacher whose biology students made the initial discovery.1
God will “destroy them which destroy the earth,” says the Bible. But the human race may be saving God the trouble by destroying itself. It is no exaggeration to say that our modern ecological crisis is a health crisis of epic proportions, and our ability to solve environmental problems will determine our survival as a society, and as a species. It is time to reassess and redirect our activities, before it is altogether too late.
SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRY
Most of our basic raw materials used for home and industry today come from mining, drilling, and forestry. Using farm crops to make the same products means that we can finally stop destroying our environment, if we use the right crops and manufacturing technologies. This brings us back to industrial hemp. Developing a sustainable domestic resource with the versatility of hemp assures a consistent and stable economy with the flexibility to encounter changing circumstances.
A resource is sustainable when it can renew itself as quickly as we consume it. Hemp grows for a few months and dies at the end of its season, whether harvested or not, leaving its seed, stalk, and fiber behind. The next year, it grows right back. Our industries can keep using hemp year after year, and our farms will grow it year after year. As demand grows, simply plant more hemp. Hemp grows abundantly here. It lends itself to a wide variety of methods and circumstances of manufacture, from cottage industries to mass production. Hemp is one of the most profitable agricultural crops to grow, and among the easiest industrial feedstocks to use.2 It can be manufactured to produce food, clothing, housing, paper, plastic, energy, and many other essential consumer goods. Henry Ford built a car using hemp in 1941, and Daimler Benz hopes to do the same in 1997.3 Where equipment is scarce but labor is plentiful, hemp can be worked by hand on a small scale. It is possible to build new equipment and factories, or to adapt and retrofit existing industrial facilities for modified production. The changeover of technology is a normal process of attrition for business, as old equipment wears out and is replaced.
Sustainability provides better job security. For example, the work of most timber-related jobs does not consist of chopping down trees, but of the transportation, milling, distribution, marketing, sale, and use of timber industry end products in the form of construction materials and paper. Hemp production can rapidly expand to a level that will help maintain and expand these commercial activities. A strong argument can be made for getting big government out of the hemp business and letting the private sector determine the course of investment and development.4
Harvesting an annual crop to build a house that will stand for fifty or one hundred years is highly sustainable. Cutting down a five-hundred-year-old tree to publish a daily newspaper is not the least bit sustainable. The U.S. Department of Agriculture already knew this in 1916, when it produced Bulletin 404, reporting that our forests were being cut down three times faster than they grew. It called for alternativ
es to the use of timber and recommended using hemp pulp for paper instead of tree pulp. Over twenty years, hemp will produce four times as much pulp per acre as will forest land.5 Since hemp is a seasonal crop, it could most practically be used to extend the supply of other natural resources, such as using hemp in the fall and winter and shifting to tree farms in the spring and summer. That would assure a continuous, year-round supply of raw material.
In addition to its nutritional and topical therapeutic uses described earlier in this book, hempseed has many industrial uses. These include soap, paint, fuel and heating oil, precision engine lubricants, varnish, lacquer, sealants, plastics, and so on. Historically, the domestic demand has almost always exceeded the supply that was produced by American farms, and so industry has relied on imports from China, Russia, and other lands. The U.S. imported 116 million pounds of hempseed in 1935 alone.6 A lot of that went into paints, because hempseed oil is a good drying agent. The Sherwin Williams Paint Company’s famous “cover the world” logo showed the planet being covered with hempseed-oil–based paints until the 1937 ban forced the company to switch to petroleum and lead-based paints.7 It could now be time for them to switch back.