Hemp Seeds and your Health
Nov 3, 2008 Facts
There is more to the benefits of hemp seeds than just your health. They are also great for those who have trouble digesting soy. As the VegEater points out:
For the soy-sensitive vegan (it aggravates my eczema), Hemp is the holy grail. I don’t know what I would do without it. Drink yucky rice-milk? — bleh! Hempmilk is nutty and creamy and goes great in coffee and smoothies, and even bakes well. Hemp protein powder also works great in my morning smoothie, to give me an extra boost of 13g of protein per serving, and 8 g of fiber, as well as omega-3’s to boot! Hemp oil makes great salad dressing, and hemp seeds make great topping. And it has all 10 necessary amino acids, a complete protein!
As great of a foodstuff as soy is, it has it’s drawbacks. For instance, the manner in which it is farmed often leaves it full of synthetic hormones that can seriously disrupt your endocrine system over time. Hemp, on the other hand, rarely requires pesticides or fertilizers, leaving you with a much safer way to enhance your health. And as WH Foods points out, the nutritional content of hemp seeds abounds:
Hemp seeds and hemp oil are found in an increasing variety of food products and have also been fairly well studied in terms of their nutritional content. Seeds from this group of plants- like most plant seeds-are a good source of essential fatty acids. Linoleic acid, the omega-6 essential fatty acid, accounts for about two-thirds of the essential fatty acids found in hemp seeds. The other third comes from alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), the omega-3 fatty acid that forms the starting point for production of all other omega-3s in the body. There are also amino acids found in the protein portion of hemp seeds that can make important contributions to daily protein requirements.
In fact, the health benefits of hemp seeds are so substantial that you can even apply it topically. Hemp seed personal care products are available to help you improve the look of both your skin and your hair. It really is a shame that hemp foodstuffs aren’t more widely available on the market, and more affordable where they are.
Tags: Add new tag, EFAs, essential fatty acids, health benefits, hemp seeds, omegea fatty acids
Hemp for Hounds
Oct 27, 2008 Products
It’s been a pretty slow day in the world of hemp news, but I never thoughts it’d be a dog’s day. In my surfing around the world wide interwebs, the only <i>hemps-up</i> I’ve been able to find was one mention of a hemp-based dog bed, and another of hemp-based dog toys. First, one North Shore News reporter had this tale to tell of her adventure out shopping for a dog bed:
One particular bed caught my eye, it was a basic fleece bed, but the fleece covering was made from recycled plastic water bottles. The sales gal tried to explain how this was possible but I must have looked like a deer caught in the head lights as she stopped mid sentence and said… “Maybe we should look at the hemp beds instead.”
Yes there are beds made of hemp fibre that are durable and eco-friendly, as well as a completely organic cotton bed that is filled with some sort of cotton fibre from an ancient tree in Botswana. A portion of the proceeds of the sale of these beds apparently goes back to the villagers who pick this cotton-like substance. (Where have I been for so many years? . . . Oh right, shopping in Costco!)
So it seems that (wo)man’s bestfriend is also able to reap the benefits of one of the most sustainable natural resources in existence. But it doesn’t stop here. There are also these hemp dog toys from Uncommongoods.com:
Just because your dog doesn’t care what he puts in his mouth doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! Let your pup sink his teeth into these eco-friendly squeaky chew toys made with naturally durable hemp plant fiber and natural dyes from plants and minerals. Made with a low-eco impact, the owl and elephant are certified non-toxic, chemical-free, saliva resistant and have a reduced allergy level.
So it looks like you don’t have to be a bi-ped to benefit from the, er, benefits of industrial hemp. In fact, this is just the kind diverse consumer portfolio that hemp needs to help push it into both mainstream production and cultivation. If more people were made aware of its many uses, then there’d be sufficient incentive (i.e. investment) to get it out of the periphery of commercialization and into the mainstream where it can do the planet and the economy the good that it has the potential do to.
Tags: Add new tag, dog bed, dog toys, pets
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