Can you imagine going to a restaurant and ordering a salad made with tasty little hemp leaves? What about picking up a container of hemp greens from the grocery store to feed to your family for dinner? Hemp greens may not yet be commonly available, but it may only be a matter of time until they are.
Baby hemp greens are making their debut at the Produce Marketing Association Foodservice Conference and Expo held in California on July 21 and 22. Beach Road Organics will be offering hemp to both foodservice companies and retailers as a baby leaf product and as an ingredient in leafy green mixes.
Hemp greens pack a nutritious punch
This specialty salad green certainly gets credit for being a novelty, but there may be more to this new food offering than meets the eye. Hemp greens are reportedly packed with nutrients, which include essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, dietary fiber, enzymes, vitamins and minerals, among other nutrients.
If the earlier thought of serving up hemp salad to your kids set off some alarm bells in your brain, know that there is no need to worry. Hemp greens reportedly contain extremely low to no THC. This means that eating hemp salad will not cause you or your family to feel intoxicated.
The hemp greens that Beach Road Organics is selling are being grown the family-owned company Dobler & Sons in partnership with Solare Ventures Inc, which is the licensee of several proprietary industrial hemp seeds. The new product offerings have reportedly undergone extensive testing to make sure that they either meet or exceed all regulatory guidelines. The offerings are also certified organic.
“Since this is such a new product, we look forward to educating customers and consumers about the benefits of this hemp-based edible green,” Craig Dobler, owner of Dobler & Sons, reportedly said. “We believe the effort is worth it as this novel product is sure to catch the interest of chefs and consumers. It is also a sustainable crop that can be grown year-round on California’s Central Coast.”
Inspiring new culinary creations
“In addition to being an excellent source of nutrients and complement to a variety of salad greens, we’re excited to see how chefs and consumers get creative with the unmistakable leaf shape, taste and texture,” Dobler reportedly added.
Reports indicate that the flavor of hemp greens can range from citrusy to earthy. Taste testers from Cornell University reportedly found that baby hemp greens have a “relatively mild taste, with unique fruity and floral flavors, and a soft, slightly fuzzy texture.”
Taste testers from the University of Arizona described hemp leaves as having “minty and fruity flavors, with floral influences. They reportedly rated the crispness to be similar to kale.
Although the product branding and retail packing are still in development, hemp greens are available now for foodservice businesses. With a crop cycle of only 18 days from planting to harvest, the growers reportedly anticipate being able to quickly respond to a sudden spike in demand if that should occur as more people try this unique baby green.
Sources
[2] https://www.crxmag.com/issues/2020/spring/the-nutritional-value-of-raw-cannabis.shtml#
[3] https://hempindustrydaily.com/hemp-baby-greens-may-be-the-next-salad-superfood-researchers-say/
