Telling the news

Australian dieticians seeking to overturn the ban.

After reading the article I was having lunch with my sister and her boyfriend, who is from Australia, so asked him why they have been deprived of this amino acid rich food. Apparently it is because of it's close relationship with marijuana.

I am told that marijuana has an abundance of THC, the psychoactive compound, but there is only a very small trace of it in hemp and runners in the UK, America and plenty of other places in the world (but not Australia!) can enjoy the benefits of it and can sleep easily at night without the fear of failing any drugs test!

So, what is it and where do we find it? Well, we find it everywhere! I even have some handcream from the Body Shop that is made from hemp oil and whenever I put it on my other half tells me that he can smell 80's head banger bikers! You'll know what I mean if you smell it! I've also got a couple of tops made from it but the best use of it seems to be to eat the seeds as these provide healthy protein, fats and minerals.

So, should we runners strive to add to this to our diet? It certainly wouldn't do us any harm and will probably do us a lot of good.

For one thing, hemp seeds contain all the essential amino acids and so are high in protein. This means we can ditch the protein shakes and replace them with hemp seeds.

Secondly, they provide us with plenty of Omega 6 which is good but it should be in balance with Omega 3. Too much 6 without enough 3 can be bad and has been linked to asthma and depression. Apparently we have plenty of foods in our modern diet with plenty of 6 but not enough 3. Hemp seeds have the perfect ratio of 4:1 and also contain GLA (gamma-linolenic acid).

Finally there is a high presence of trace minerals.

We runners need to consume protein, particularly after a hard training session or race. This is needed in order to rebuild the muscles to which we have caused small mirco-tears duing the training session. We also need carbohydrate to keep our glycogen stores healthy and give us the fuel we need for our training and racing. Hemp flour is perfect for this: 41% protein, 32% carbohydrate, 18% dietary fibre, and it is gluten free and so is great to use when baking healthy snacks. It is made from the left over seeds after they have been crushed to extract the oil, which you can also buy to drizzle on your salad. When we are training hard there is the risk of damage to the immune system. We can boost the immune system with the right food and hemp oil is one of them.

So, it seems that you may need to add it to your shopping list although I'm not sure how available it will be in general supermarkets. I've just had a look in my larder and have only found one item that contains them. I have a jar of 'Food Doctor Original Seed Mix'. I remember buying it when it was in the bargain basket! I've been sprinkling it onto salads, when I remember. I've just read the contents label and I'm happy to say that there are hemp seeds in there. Anyone got any good recipes for homemade energy bars with hemp seed?