Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Gero Leson
Leson and Associates, Berkeley, California, USA
16.1 Introduction
was grown for fibre, the by-product seeds were
also always used as a food ingredient. An indi-
cation is the still common traditional use of
roasted hemp seeds as snacks in China and
Turkey. In recent centuries, hemp seeds were
an ingredient in traditional recipes in rural
Central and Eastern Europe. Examples include
a 'hemp soup' described in a German recipe
and a hemp butter used traditionally in Baltic
countries. Historic sources from all over Europe
describe medicinal applications of hemp seeds
to treat symptoms such as stomach or ear pain,
coughing and incontinence. However, it is not
clear whether these benefits are derived from
the nutrients provided by the seeds or from the
cannabinoids, including THC, which may have
been present and incorporated into the formu-
lation. Since fibre quality was usually best for
textiles before the seeds were fully mature,
hemp seeds were often not harvested and
probably never a major food source, only a
welcome addition to the often monotonous
make-up of rural cooking. Hemp seeds were
used extensively as bird food and the oil as a
drying oil, with properties similar to those of
linseed oil.
As the farming and use of hemp for fibre
declined in Europe even long before World
War II, the use of hemp seeds for food also
disappeared gradually. Figure 16.1 shows that,
in recent decades, China has been producing
the vast majority of the world's hemp seed
In several Western countries, hemp seeds and
oil are gradually making a comeback as ingre-
dients in food and cosmetics products. The
best example is North America, where the
recent steady increase in Canadian hemp acre-
age is driven almost exclusively by demand
from the US market for 'natural foods'. But
also in the UK and Germany, hemp foods, that
is, any food products containing hemp seeds
or oil, are beginning to appear in stores and
receive press coverage. In the 1990s, much of
the coverage of hemp foods was driven by
hype or, in the USA, the issue of contamina-
tion by trace amounts of THC, the major psy-
choactive ingredient of marijuana. Nowadays,
the potential health benefits and taste of hemp
foods have become an important buying con-
sideration. This chapter reviews the drivers for
the recent expansion of the hemp food market
and discusses the opportunities and challenges
it offers to the global hemp industry.
While the use of hemp as a fibre source in,
for example, ancient China is well documented,
less is known about the use of hemp seeds as a
food source. However, European sources and
archaeological finds suggest that hemp seeds
were used for both food and medicinal applica-
tions by the first centuries
AD
. Despite the lack
of written records, it is most likely that in
European and Asian countries, wherever hemp
