HEALTH FOOD STORES CASHING IN ON HEMP
LA TIMES - Soy's new competition: hemp
Breads, bars and milk are flying off the shelves, but excitement is outpacing evidence.
By Janet Cromley, Times Staff Writer
May 14, 2007
Like a bloodhound, Gira Balistreri is racing through the palatial Whole Foods Market in El Segundo, sniffing out some of her favorite foods.
A new employee at the 65,000-square-foot flagship store, she goes directly to several shelves of hemp shakes and snacks, then trots over to tidy rows of hemp butter and oil, then rushes down an aisle and snaps up a fresh package of hemp tortillas on her way to the hemp bars, hemp bread and hemp bagels.
"Hemp," she says excitedly, "is just an awesome seed."
Balistreri isn't alone in her devotion. In the last two years, sales of hemp food products in markets and grocery stores rose by more than 50%, propelling the unassuming seed to an $8.6-million industry, according to SPINS, a market research and consulting firm for the natural products industry.
Hemp foods began filtering into grocery stores about five years ago, after the 1998 legalization of industrial hemp farming in Canada. The U.S. currently prohibits commercial cultivation of industrial hemp, but allows the import of seeds, oil, flour and other byproducts to be manufactured into ready-to-eat foods in the U.S.
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1 comment:
a good online source for hemp products, if you want to try them, is www.shopnatural.com - they've got hemp lotions and lip balms and shampoos, protein shakes and seeds, brownie mixes (heh) and granola bars.
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