Image via WikipediaIn my job as a candy and snacks buyer, I receive a lot of email newsletters related to the food industry. One of the newsletters that I subscribe to is put out by Natural Food Merchandising magazine so that I can stay aware of any trends in the natural and organic snack markets. This week, they had a rather interesting article about the use of medical marijuana in food product.Now, I am not, nor have I ever been a marijuana use. I did try it a couple of times in college with a couple friends of mind, but all it did was make me cough. I just could not manage to inhale the smoke. I did have some friends who did smoke on a regular basis. Some of them talked about baking marijuana into brownies, and I remember a particularly funny Barney Miller episode where the squad mistakenly got high off of marijuana laced brownies.
The gist of the article was about companies in Colorado who were working on a variety of gourmet food products that are infused with medical marijuana. In particular, they mention a company called Simply Pure that makes a wide variety of products that goes beyond the stereotypical pot brownies. Among their offerings are pizza, sodas, energy drinks, cheese cakes, and candies. Their goal is to product all natural, organic, gluten-free and sugar free foods.
The article goes on to include quotes from a doctor who specializes in medical marijuana evaluations and nutrition. He talks about the benefits of healthy and natural eating for everyone, but especially for those who require medical marijuana. In addition to healthy eating as a whole, the good doctor say that consuming medical marijuana in foodstuffs may be more beneficial to patients than smoking, due to a slower absorption rate in digestion and burning through smoking can destroy some of the beneficial cannabinoids in the marijuana.
I do not intend to get into the arguments on whether or not medical marijuana is a good or bad thing for society. There seems to be some evidence that it does help some people suffering from cancer and long term pain. Of course there is always the opportunity for abuse. I can see the benefit of ingesting medical marijuana in food form versus smoking, just based on my experience of not being able to inhale smoke. Though I hope I never get so sick that I will require medical marijuana.
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