Hemp now legal as food!

Hemp has finally been approved as food in Australia for the first time in over 50 years! This legalisation movement is finally starting to snowball.

TRANSCRIPT

Get ready to see an explosion of new hemp food products in supermarkets, restaurants and cafe’s, because for the first time in over 50 years, the Food Regulation committee of Australia and New Zealand have *finally* made the landmark decision to allow hemp to be legally sold as food!! 

To give you some idea of just how overdue this is, Australia and New Zealand are the *very last two countries in the entire world* to prohibit hemp as food. *face* Yeah, that’s how super sensitive our government is to cannabis  - they have a debilitating fear about everything related to the c-word. And ironically, Australia is arguably the best country in the world to grow and export hemp! 

Hi, I’m Charlie - stick around and I’ll tell you a few reasons why you should be adding these seeds to your breakfast smoothie.  

Hemp, the straight-laced cousin of weed. Actually, more like brother because it is part of the cannabis family... but importantly hemp contains only trace amounts of THC; that’s the “naughty” part of cannabis which makes normal people feel happy and healthy, but makes politicians feel paranoid and scared.

Did you know other countries have been eating hemp for decades. Food Standards Australia have approved hemp for consumption for the last 15 years!? The government has just been ignoring this advice again and again, hoping it would go away. So aside from being a super sustainable, zero carbon footprint alternative for plastic, fuel, building materials, medicine, clothes, paper, cosmetics, and about a zillion other things…hemp is also arguably one of the most healthy superfoods available! Yeah, take that kale ! 

Hemp seeds in particular are packed with protein, amino acids, essential fatty acids, magnesium, zinc, iron, calcium, phosphorus, thiamine, potassium - you get the picture! And hemp is the only food to contain Omega 3 and 6 in just the right amounts to meet our nutritional needs. It’s also naturally low in carbs, cholesterol, and sodium. And it has 50% more protein than acia. Ack-eye? Ah-sigh-ee?.There are already a number of places you can buy hemp seeds and hemp seed oil, 

But, check this out, the label must explicitly state that it’s not for human consumption, and products even have a sticker hiding the nutrition information on the back of the packet. Y’know, just in case you happen to accidentally sprinkle it on your muesli. With the law changes, all of these stickers will be coming off! 

Hemp can be used to make everything from breakfast cereal and health bars to ice-cream and dairy-free delicious hemp milk! Imagine what cafes, health food stores, and restaurants will start doing with it?! You will be and should be adding it to your weekly shop. It’s already a billion dollar crop!

The reason why hemp seeds have been banned as food is because we have such an over sensitive and debilitating fear about everything to do with or related to cannabis, that our government just went ‘yep, that looks the same, let’s ban that too’. 

But this is ridiculous because hemp has only trace amounts of THC. You would quite literally have to eat bails of it to get high. Believe me, soon it will be embarrassing for anyone who supported prohibition. Hang on… yeah, no… It already is embarrassing. Hemp is the longest, strongest, most durable natural fibre on earth, and one of the easiest plants for humans to digest, and we’ve known it for decades. It’s not some hippie gimmick. 

It uses about half as much water as cotton, produces four times as much fibre per acre than timber. It grows in most climates, and requires no herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, or insecticides to grow well. Hemp is also an amazing rotation crop which stabilizes and enriches the soil nitrogen, oxygen and other nutrients. There is literally no downsides to hemp. It’s ridiculous that we have a plant like this, but we restrict it’s use because it happens to be related to marijuana. It’s like me getting sent to jail because my brother got convicted of smoking weed. 

This is certainly not the first time the Food Regulation people have been asked to reevaluate hemp, but every time previously it has been knocked back. Last time, the reason was because law enforcement were paranoid that eating hemp seeds would lead to failing drug tests, even though this has never been proven or even claimed by any experts. One hemp farmer said you would literally need to eat a pallet of hemp seeds for it to possibly show up in the roadside drug tests.  

So what’s next… well, the TGA will still have to formally change the laws, and farmers will still need special licences to grow hemp for food, but now there is much more incentive to plant the crop, so expect to see a lot more investment and jobs in hemp very soon. And to see it on the menu! That’s why this news about the regulation of hemp as food is such a big deal. We are definitely losing our irrational fear of cannabis and cannabis’s cousin hemp, and finally re-discovering it’s amazing potential. 

This is all part of the bigger trend of normalisation and re-acceptance, and win-win for everyone! Exciting times! 

Be the first to get on board with this trend, and you all know that sharing this just helps spread awareness -  like and share this video, and check back here for updates, or subscribe on youtube for notifications of new videos. 

Bye!