Hempseed & Nutrition

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Legend says that Gautama Buddha ate only one hemp seed a day for six years while he waited for nirvana. Hempseed is eaten by many of India's poor people. A mixture called bosa consists of the seeds of Eleusine and hemp, and mura is made with parched wheat, amaranth or rice, and hempseed. The seeds are said to make all vegetables more palatable and complete foods. Sometimes it is an ingredient in chutney. Bhang and ripe hempseed also is used to flavor or strengthen the formulations of some alcohol beverages.

Hempseed has served as a primary famine food in China, Australia, and Europe as recently as World War Two. Medieval Christian monks ate hempseed gruel every day. Even in modern times, mothers of the Sotho tribe in South Africa are known to feed their babies with ground hempseed in pap. (99)

Hempseed now is an ingredient in food products, including flour, cheese, ice cream, yogurt, pudding, milk, spreads, candy, and meat substitutes. Prices are kept high by the cost of shipping, steam sterilization, repackaging, domestic shipping, and old equipment.

Hempseed contains all the essential amino acids and fatty acids, and is considered to be a complete food. The seed or achene contains 26-31% crude protein, 65% of which is globular edestin and albumin that is about 84% digestible. Lysine (the limiting protein in edestin) and other components are destroyed by the heat generated when hempseed is pressed for its oil. Addition of 1% lysine hydrochloride will restore the nutritional balance of heat-treated edestin. The meal also contains about 6% carbohydrates, 5-10% fat, 12% crude fiber, 10% moisture, and 7% ash. (100, 101)

T.B. Osborne studied hemp edestin and reported on its isolation and purification in 1892. Until the passage of the infamous Marihuana Tax Act in 1937, edestin was regarded as a standard example of the seed globulins (the third most abundant protein after collagen and albumin). They are vital to the maintenance of a healthy immune system. (102, 103)

The globulin edestin in hempseed closely resembles that found in human blood plasma, and it is easily digested, absorbed, and utilized. Hemp edestin is so completely compatible with the human digestive system, that the Czechoslovakian Tubercular Nutrition Study (1955) found hempseed to be the only food that can successfully treat the consumptive disease tuberculosis, in which the nutritive processes are impaired. (104)

When hempseed is fed to poultry on a regular basis, the birds do not go "off feed", and they do not require hormones to fatten them. Egg production also is increased. Hempseed meal has an effect analogous to that of grit in chicken diets in as much as the gizzard linings are found to be free of corrugations and erosions. (105-107)

In Systema Agriculturae (1675), John Worlidge commented:

"Hemp seed is much commended for the feeding of poultry and other fowl, so that where plenty thereof may be had, and a good return for fowl, the use thereof must needs be advantageous..."

Source: Robert A. Nelson: Hemp & Health
 
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