A New Trend – Restaurants Selling Weed?
I’m sure you’ve heard of spacecake or weed-brownies and weed-lollipops. You’ll find this all over Amsterdam, but lately there’s more going on in the field of cannabis and CBD in combination with food. America is already making ice creams combined with CBD or even on your donut and through your cocktail. It even goes so far that there are pigs that are fed weed for pork chops with a hint of cannabis.
Is CBD food the new trend?
The American news site USA Today recently headlined: “Cannabis food and drink will be the biggest food trend of 2019, according to top chefs”. And CNN Travel posted an article describing why CBD has turned into the hottest ingredient for food and drink in the United States.
I can hear you now thinking ‘yes, that’s only in America’, but even in the Netherlands we’re not staying behind. That’s how we found out that in Utrecht, too, a jar of sambal with CBD is available from the Utrecht sambal-maker Nona Pedis. This is available in a temporary edition.
Lovechock launched CBD chocolate early this year which comes from the Netherlands. And food platform MUNCHIES even released a cookbook filled with 65 recipes made with weed. The title of this cookbook reads: Bong Appétit: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Weed.
What is CBD and why is it in my food?
Just to be clear: there is definitely a difference between weed (cannabis) and CBD. It’s mainly the latter that we now find a lot in food.
But an explanation of what CBD is seems appropriate to us. “The letters CBD come from the word cannabidiol, which is the active substance from leaves and flower tops of fibre hemp. It is the industrial version of the hemp plant that is thus legally grown. Because of its powerful active substances, the oil is sold as a food supplement” These substances support many physical and mental complaints. These include stress-related complaints, sleep problems, mood swings during and after menopause, depression and various pain complaints.
Because this is all produced legally, CBD oil is now available on the shelves of the drugstore. But how does CBD reach the chefs and restaurant kitchens? This is partly due to the attributed health benefits as mentioned above.
CBD & Ice cream
In America there is a hip ice cream stall where you can get a unique taste. At the New York hotspot you can taste the ice cream flavour chocolate cookie with CBD and of course that does not go unnoticed in this big city. This delicious and unique taste can be found at ice cream parlour by CHLOE.
They made a separate CBD menu with CBD-infused baking under the name ‘Feelz by Chloe’. Including cookies, cupcakes and brownies. And the Middle Eastern restaurant Dez (also in New York) topped its ice creams with olive oil infused with CBD oil. It even goes so far in New York that hotel The James in New York offers a complete room service menu that is all about CBD.
Pigs eating marijuana?
Although CBD oil and weed are different, it’s only a small step to cannabis. At Imperial Restaurant in Portland, they host various events where they cook with meat from weed-lined pigs. These pigs come from a nearby farm slash weed plantation.
This is not meant as an advertising stunt or to join the trend, because you don’t taste the cannabis back into the meat. “What I do taste is a healthier animal,” said the executive chef. That’s because the pigs eat plants and therefore follow a healthier diet. The pigs eat the trimmings of weed plants that would otherwise be thrown away, from before and after the harvest. So that is actually twisted sustainable. And don’t worry: the animals don’t get high either. They’ll be happy…
Source – USA Today, CNN Travel, Munchies
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