MANY OF ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS CAN BE FOUND IN HEMP SEED

According to the latest research, there are about 45 nutrients that
humans can't live without and which their bodies can't manufacture: 21
minerals, 13 vitamins, eight amino acids and two essential fatty
acids. No single food has them all. But when a food is discovered that
is a rich source of several essential nutrients, such as hemp seed, it
makes nutrition news.

Its promoters bill hemp seed as the soybean of the new millennium. In
addition to containing vitamins and minerals (calcium, iron, thiamine,
niacin and riboflavin), hemp seed, like the soybean, is a vegetable
source of complete protein, having all eight amino acids. Hemp oil
(pressed from the hemp seed) is, according to many, the best source of
the two essential fatty acids (or EFAs) we can't live without: omega 3
alpha-linolenic acid and omega 6 linoleic acid.

What makes it the best source? Although other vegetable oils (flax,
canola, soybean and walnut, for example) contain these same fatty
acids, hemp seed oil contains them in an optimum ratio of 1 to 3 (one
omega 3 to three omega 6s).

In addition, hemp is the only edible seed oil that contains omega 6
gamma-linolenic acid. In "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill," Udo Erasmus
writes that hemp seed oil's "unusually well-balanced profile means
that one could use it for a lifetime without ever suffering EFA
deficiency."

The emphasis on reducing fat in our diets (the just-updated USDA
guidelines say fat should supply only 30 percent of daily calories)
and the sudden increase in low-fat and fat-free food products can make
it hard to get enough essential fatty acids.

"We can go overboard and get our fat intake too low, so the challenge
is to reduce fat but keep our essential fatty acids up," says Bruce M.
Chassy, assistant dean at the College of Agricultural Consumer and
Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.

Chassy agrees that "hemp oil is an excellent source of essential fatty
acids." But no food is perfect, Chassy says. Hemp oil is cold-pressed
(extracted at low temperatures) and must be refrigerated (or frozen)
and consumed quickly or it will become rancid. In addition, hemp oil
cannot be used for frying or sauteing, because heat destroys the oil's
nutritional components and can make it indigestible.

Fresh hemp oil is green (from chlorophyll and carotene) and has an
appealing nutty flavor. As for hemp seeds themselves (often called
"hemp nuts"), Chassy is reserving judgment.

"I have a hunch it's a fairly decent protein, and this stuff is not
unfairly billed as nutritious," Chassy says. "But we have not been
eating this long enough to know if there are any anti-nutritional
factors. That's a reasonable question to ask of any new food, and we
need research to answer it."

Proponents of hemp seed cite its high-quality protein and its
digestibility. It is incorporated into granolas as well as snack chips.

Before people started marketing hemp seed oil and hemp nuts, there was
hemp rope for the world's navies and, of course, marijuana, which has
unfairly contributed to hemp products' image problems. Edible hemp
comes from a different plant than the intoxicating variety.

Hemp seed is the fruit of the cannabis plant, which includes three
main varieties: Cannabis sativa, C. indica and C. ruderalis.

C. sativa, or hemp, is grown for its fibers and seeds and can be used
to make more than 25,000 different products, including textiles,
paper, paint, biofuel, particleboard, cordage, cosmetics and food. It
has little to no tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating
substance. C. indica is another story: Its dried leaves and flowers
are smoked for their narcotic effect; hashish is extracted from the
resin of this Indian hemp. C. ruderalis has varying amounts of THC.

Despite its nonintoxicating nature, hemp oil has a potentially
embarrassing quality that it shares with poppy seeds: It can cause a
false-positive result in urine tests to detect drug use.

Today, industrial hemp is legally cultivated in many countries,
including Canada, but not in the United States. Most of our supply of
hemp seed for food use is imported from China and Canada. By law, the
hemp seed is sterilized so it will not grow. But hemp foods are
proliferating, and advocates predict that food will be the No. 1 use
for hemp in the future.