Eat Hemp Seeds for a Healthy Snack

Is Hemp the Same as Marijuana? Let’s Clear the Air

Hemp is not marijuana. Using the word “marijuana” on our website can be risky when it comes to Google crawls and ad approvals. For years, we’ve faced restrictions and have been prohibited from running ads. We’ve been blocked or shadowbanned on social media. For businesses like ours selling hemp seed food products, digital censorship has been a real, ongoing challenge.

Since around 2014, the broad confusion between industrial hemp and psychoactive cannabis has stifled the growth of the industrial hemp industry. It’s not just a marketing hurdle, this censorship has significantly obstructed efforts to educate the public about the value of hemp as an agricultural commodity and to inform consumers about the incredible nutritional value of hemp seeds.

Let’s Clear the Air; Is Hemp the Same as Marijuana – No

There are distinct differences in hemp and marijuana. While both come from the Cannabis sativa plant species, hemp and marijuana are very different in their chemical makeup and usage. Hemp plants carries a very low level of the psychoactive phytocannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The THC must measure less than 0.3%.

Industrial Hemp has a lot of value as an agricultural commodity. The hemp plant can be used to provide the raw materials for tens of thousands of useful everyday products. Most anything made and produced from petroleum, including plastics and fuel; or a forest full of trees, can be made from hemp. Unfortunately propaganda and disinformation has plagued hemp for its worth in the United States and around the world for nearly 100 years.

There are many reasons for this, but to me, one of the saddest outcomes from all the lies, is that hemp seed foods provide a very nutrient dense, omega rich, high protein food source. Most people are unaware that hemp seeds are something healthy to eat because they have been led to believe something different.

Hemp Seeds Ready to Harvest from a Kentucky Hemp Field

Hemp is a Superfood

Eating hemp protein powder, using hemp flour, adding hemp hearts to your meals can improve your health significantly. People mistakenly think that eating hemp seeds will make them high, or cause them to fail a drug test. This is a myth. Resulting into one of the world’s most nutrient dense foods being sequestered from most people’s dinner table because they’re fearful and misinformed.

What’s really unfortunate, is that hemp seeds; as a shelf-stable, highly nutritious food has not, and is not, utilized to feed starving children around the world or in our own country. It was Harry Anslinger who set the stage in the 1930’s that turned hemp into a devil-weed and related hemp to a new word called marijuana. Thank goodness, Anslinger’s efforts to rid and eradicate hemp from the face of the earth failed, but it’s been a long road moving forward.

Hemp Seed Nutrition Breakdown

Ounce per ounce, hemp seeds are one of the most nutrient dense foods we can eat. The essential fatty acids of omega-6 and omega-3 (polyunsaturated fat) are considered a near perfect balance of the good fats we need for healthy body function.

Check Out the Outstanding Nutrition in Hemp Seed

The Protein Hemp Seeds Provide

The protein in hemp seeds carries 20 amino acids, including the the 9 essential amino acids we must get from the food we eat. That’s more digestible protein than fish, meat, cheese, eggs or cow’s milk. All from one single ingredient. Anything made with hemp seeds, doesn’t need to be fortified because hemp provides a full plate of your nutritional needs. That’s why hemp seeds should be feeding starving people around the world.

Is Hemp the Same as Marijuana to Large Food Manufactures?

Large food manufactures have avoided and are still avoiding providing hemp seed foods in the foods they make and sell. It stems from outdated policies and ignorance, along with political and special interest pressure. Instead of stepping up to the plate to provide people with truly good, nourishing, real foods. Many food manufacturers choose to fortify and add isolated, crazy additive ingredients to their products. They dump what they call “healthy ingredients” in a box, or frozen meals; then sell it off as “healthy eating” to unsuspecting consumers.

Do yourself a big favor, take time to read the ingredients of the foods you’re buying and feeding to your children. Many people are ill because of the ingredients that are being put in our foods; worse yet, they’re thinking they’re making a healthy choice.

It sounds rather scandalous, but I’m of the opinion that feeding people garbage and marketing unhealthy foods as being “healthy” is a deliberate attempt to make us fat and sick. Visual advertisements have let our minds accept things that we shouldn’t. Propaganda has set the stage for believing things that are not true.

This is Not About Fat-Shaming

Over the last 50-years, the obesity rate has risen to 1 in 3 adults being overweight and 1 in 11 are severely overweight. Obesity is a health problem. Most people who are overweight are also malnourished. The foods they’re eating are not providing them with proper nutrition, inducing many chronic illness.

Diabetes is a money maker in this country. Most diabetes can be cured or controlled by foods, and its not by eating artificial sweeteners. Since our health care system is built on a defined set of oligopolies making money off people being sick, there’s no incentive otherwise. People are being tricked, kept just sick enough to remain dependent, while powerful oligopolies profit and laugh all the way to the bank.

For decades, Americans have been steered wrong about fats and have been advised to eat low-fat and fat-free foods. This is  bad information. You need healthy fats to be healthy. People have been deliberately misinformed and its causing them health problems.

Fact: You Can Become Fat if You Are Not Eating Proper Fats!

Fatty acids play important roles in various bodily functions, including inflammation, cell growth, and brain health. Maintaining a balanced intake of omega-6 and omega-3 is crucial for overall health. See my blog post, Did You Know Your Body Can Become Fat by Not Eating Fats? for more detailed information about dietary fats.

Why have consumers been kept in the dark about this nutritional need? (Stayed tuned for an upcoming blog, The Omega Revelation… ) because consuming balanced omegas is imperative for healthy body function and the health benefits are numerous.

The Nutrition Label Dilemma – Understanding What’s Missing

It’s interesting that nutrition fact labels in the United States do not provide a daily value for omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. In contract, the FDA requires total fat to be listed, and to identify Saturated Fat and Trans Fat, but the specifics of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are not identified. Yet they’re imperative. The FDA has not established a daily value need for omegas either so it makes it difficult for consumers. It’s like lumping Vitamin D and Vitamin A together in one category.

Is hemp the same as marijuana? No more than vitamin D is to vitamin A

Consumers have been led to believe that marijuana is the same as hemp, when if fact they’re different. Just like consumers have been led to believe all dietary fats are the same and to avoid them. Nutrition fact labeling does not always tell the whole story. This lack of proper information comes down to people’s dietary needs being compromised, creating illness.  It’s the power of propaganda.

Bringing Hemp Home

Hemp seed foods and hemp seed oil have been legal to import; buy and sell; be used as ingredients in our foods in the United States since 1998. In contrast, growing hemp or teaching about hemp cultivation and nutrition was federally illegal until December 20, 2018 (which happened to be my 60th birthday!) when Donald Trump signed The Agricultural Improvement of 2018, which removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act. It was a long overdue correction.

The 2018 Farm Bill redefined the definition of marijuana, resulting in federally freeing hemp so it could be grown in U.S. farm fields. It also opened the gate for public schools, universities and other higher education facilities to teach about hemp seed nutrition in their curriculum, as well as hemp cultivation. However, it’s been a slow process for public awareness.

When I began selling hemp seed food products in 2009, I could only get hemp seeds from Canada. It was a challenge talking about hemp’s nutritional benefits. People were in disbelief. Colleges that offered nutritional degree programs or other wellness education programs in the United States were technically not allowed to teach about the nutrition in hemp. Hemp was classified as a Schedule I Controlled Substance thanks to Richard Nixon. The science didn’t matter.

This is why hemp seed nutrition carries such a deep-dark secret. This is why so many people have been led to believe hemp is something that it is not. Not to be political, or if you like Trump or not; but he was the only president after more than 45-years, with enough balls to correct hemp’s misclassification.

Hemp is More Than a Superior Food Source

Some of What Hemp Fiber Can Provide

Hemp is one of the oldest agricultural crops known to man. It’s cultivation dates back 50,000 years and was used not only for food, but provided fiber, fuel, medicine, shelter, and more. Hemp is one of the most controversial agricultural commodities. When Harry Anslinger set out to ban hemp cultivation, it wasn’t just about marijuana – it was hemp they were after. Hemp’s fuel and fiber needed to be squashed. Crude oil and petroleum refineries were the new kids on the block. Harvesting forests for lumber and paper was a profitable industry.

The etymology of marijuana is short lived compared to hemp and cannabis. The word marijuana originated from Latin American Spanish influence. William Randolph Hearst began publishing the word marijuana in his newspapers creating complete false claim as to what marijuana actually was. His yellow journalism was a calculated smear campaign that was successful in creating hysteria and aided in banning cannabis – hemp cultivation. Propaganda that lined the pockets of a select group of men. Just follow the money. You’ll understand.