GOT THE MUNCHIES? TRY SOME HEMP FOOD

Every bite was accompanied by a giggle.

Ooh, hemp food. The giggles were natural, of course. After all, hemp food
distributors say that, even though the hemp plant is a relative of
marijuana, their products contain no drugs and have lots of protein and
essential fatty acids.

Tasters found that the bread, cookies and sodas containing hemp weren't too
different in flavor from their non-hemp counterparts. But purely hemp
products -- such as shelled hempseed -- did taste a bit like . . . grass.
The lawn kind, that is.

Our tastings are usually blind comparisons of like items. For this
munch-fest, tasters knew up front what they were sampling. Here's what they
thought about:

HempNut Chocolate Chip Cookies Price: $3.50 for a package of 9 cookies.
Calories: 140 per cookie.

Tasters liked the generous helping of chocolate chips in these sweet and
crunchy cookies, which are available by mail order from Santa Rosa-based
HempNut, the largest importer of shelled hemp seeds in the United States.
But one taster said the cookies had a sandy edge "and left a bitter
aftertaste in my mouth." Bummer.

Hemp Soda Price: $1 per 11.1-oz. can with 1 serving. Calories: 154 per serving.

This grapefruit-flavored German import spotted at a 7-Eleven contains "hemp
essence" and caffeine. It tasted like an oily cross between Mountain Dew
and Squirt.

Healthy Hemp Sprouted Bread Price: $4.49 per 24-oz. sliced loaf with about
16 servings. Calories: 115 per slice.

A product of the French Meadow Bakery in Minneapolis, this "meal in a
slice," as the label boasts, is dark as pumpernickel and studded with
shelled hempseed, flaxseed and pumpkin seeds. Tasters found it quite chewy
- -- "jaw workout in a slice," said one. But it was also genuinely tasty.
This product is sold in refrigerated cases at health food stores.

Lifestream Hemp Plus Toaster Waffles Price: $2.19 per 11-oz. package with 4
servings. Calories: 220 per 2-waffle serving.

This Canadian product contains no eggs or dairy products. Yet the pale and
round waffles toast up light and pleasantly sweet and chewy. Available at
Whole Foods.

HempNut Creamy Peanut Butter Price: $7 per 9-oz. jar with 8 servings.
Calories: 185 per 2-tablespoon serving.

Simple stuff: Valencia peanuts, hemp seed and sea salt. Newly opened, it
looks like most natural peanut butters -- the top is filmed with oil. A
quick mix and it becomes a rich, brown-green paste. "It tastes extra chalky
to me," one taster said. "The appearance of little black specks made it
look like it would be a little crunchy, but it dissolved nicely in the
mouth," another said.

HempNut Chocolatey Whole Food Bar Price: $17 per box with 12 bars.
Calories: 250 per 1.7-oz. bar.

It's vegan, 65 percent organic and looks like a compressed Rice Krispy bar
dipped in chocolate. "Nice crunch, peanutty flavor. Not bad," one taster said.

HempNut Organic Shelled Hempseed Price: $9 for 12-oz. can with 24 servings.
Calories: 80 per 1/2-ounce serving.

The label suggests using this product as a topping, like sesame seeds.
Since it looks like couscous, it could also pass for a bread-crumb topping.
The meaty morsels taste like a cross between sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
"It doesn't taste bad, but then again, it doesn't taste like much," one
taster said. "I'm not quite sure why you'd choose to eat this."

Our tasters: Aaron Davis, Sara Neufeld, Truong Phuoc Khanh, Josh Kwan,
Nicole Wong of the Mercury News staff; Caleb Chu, Stanford University
researcher.