The Healing Properties of Hemp
Daniel Rinzler felt the effects of his first hemp smoothie in the moments after drinking it on a surfing trip to California in 2006. He also felt the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the moments after it was declared in March 2020. Rinzler, who calls Toronto home, was running an educational travel business that operates camps. Trips were cancelled. So, too, were those summery rites of passage.
But through it all, there was hemp, a food from a renaissance plant that can do anything from feeding us to insulating our homes. Be it that fateful first smoothie with hemp mixed in, or the bowls starring hemp hearts and the salad drizzled with hemp oil that followed, Rinzler was “blown away by what the food provided me as an action sport enthusiast.”
It filled him up without loading him down like other foods in his diet, including meat, which he eventually gave up. Three tablespoons of hulled hemp seeds dusting the morning’s oatmeal packs 10 grams of protein, but it’s more easily digestible than that other plant-based wunderkind, soy.
It also boasts a more-than-optimal ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids — nearly two to one versus the scientifically suggested four to one — to prevent cardiovascular, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Hemp is no slouch when it comes to iron, magnesium, vitamin E and B6, either.
“I just know it’s good for you,” Rinzler says. “When you eat hemp, it fills you up and makes you feel light. You can say it gave me an energy boost.”
At the outset of a global pandemic that made a casualty of the travel industry, it also gave Rinzler the idea for an entirely new business plan with friends Jeff Richmond and Elie Landsberg. Rather than give people their next thrill on vacation, they decided to give them a health rush instead.
Rinzler and crew were in love with hemp’s versatility as a nutritious food, fuel, medicine, textile or construction material known as hempcrete. There were the environmental benefits, too: Hemp is an ideal candidate for organic production.
Based on that, the trio launched Together Hemp Co. in September 2020, sourcing organic hemp grown and packaged in Ontario. They sold it online and in health food stores nationally, including at Hybrid Pharm, Burrow Shop and Natural Food Pantry, among others, in Ottawa.
“From all those years of eating it and loving it… we were like ‘OK, we’re not going to sit around and see what happens. We’re entrepreneurs and we had to do something,” Rinzler recalled. “We decided that whatever we do, we had to be passionate about it, it had to be Earth-friendly, eco-friendly, regenerative. It was hemp.”
Today, Together Hemp Co. sells hemp hearts by the pound in plain or maple flavour. There’s also hemp protein powder for those life-changing smoothies, including a version with roasted cacao from ChocoSol, a Toronto-based, direct-trade chocolatier. Hemp oil, marketed as both a food and beauty aid, rounds out the cornerstones of Together Hemp Co.’s product lineup.
The company isn’t the first to channel the nutritional power of the lanky plant that looks like an evergreen in an Emily Carr painting into a food business. In fact, Rinzler largely credits Together Hemp Co.’s success to those who came before him — and the pandemic that forced him to change his career path.
“We’re lucky to be trailing behind Manitoba Harvest that’s been around 20 years,” he says.
“It was the perfect time to launch this company,” he added. “When the pandemic hit, it was shop local and being a business in Toronto, it’s been great. If it was pre-pandemic, people probably would have been like ‘Well, there’s Manitoba Harvest.’”
It’s true that much of the credit for hemp’s rise to superfood status goes to the company whose roots trace back to Central Canada in 1990.
Manitoba Harvest’s trio of founders, Martin Moravcik, Mike Fata and Alex Chwaiewsky, created the Manitoba Hemp Alliance to secure government money for hemp seed trials. It was all done in an effort to throw shade on hemp’s murky reputation thanks to its association with psychoactive cannabis.
Turn the clock back some 12,000 years, however, and most civilizations grew hemp, making it one of the earliest cultivated crops in human history.
The first hemp crop in North America was planted in 1606 by French botanist Louis Hébert in what’s now Nova Scotia. Hemp seed was distributed for free to farmers in Upper Canada in the 1800s and even George Washington grew it and pushed for more hemp farming in the U.S.
But by 1937, hemp’s prestige went up in smoke with the Marijuana Tax Act in the U.S. People confused industrial hemp with weed and growing it became heavily regulated until it was eventually made illegal in 1960.
The mixup is understandable given they’re both derived from the same Cannabis sativa L. plant. The edible seeds used by Together Hemp Co. and Manitoba Harvest typically come from the male cannabis plant; the mind-altering parts, from the female. The key difference is the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content in them. Industrial hemp contains 0.3 per cent or less THC, so it’s not intoxicating.
Still, some of that confusion spilled over the Canadian border. But thanks to the efforts of Moravcik, Fata and Chwaiewsky, industrial hemp production was legalized in Canada in 1998, and Manitoba Harvest was born. The trio’s belief in the business was fuelled by Fata’s own health journey: He incorporated hemp into his diet to help him lose 300 pounds.
Manitoba Harvest, with products on the shelves of major national retailers, was acquired by Tilray, the world’s largest cannabis company, for $419 million in 2019. Superfood status was unquestionably achieved, especially in Canada where hemp consumption is six times higher than in the U.S., says Caitlyn Pulitzer, Manitoba Harvest’s senior global brand manager.
Still, the record hasn’t been entirely set straight on hemp. “One of our biggest issues is awareness,” Pulitzer says. “People don’t know why they should eat hemp. It’s a powerhouse of a seed.”
Gram for gram, hemp has more protein than chicken, she noted. Hemp hearts have half the carbs of rival chia and flax seeds, and boast twice the protein. And they contain 18 amino acids, including 11 that our bodies can’t produce on their own.
It’s also sustainable to grow, Pulitzer explained. It helps with carbon sequestration, is non-GMO and requires zero chemical inputs because it literally grows like a weed, crowding out competing pest plants. Manitoba Harvest supports organic production and also encourages growers to adopt regenerative practices.
For farmers, it provides a good return on investment, says Clarence Shwaluk, Manitoba Harvest’s director of operations. The company currently has contracts with 89 growers, largely in the Canadian Prairies, to produce conventional and organic hemp that has a direct line to a processor and market, and can be cultivated with the same equipment used for corn or wheat.
The legalization of cannabis in Canada in 2018 also opened up new opportunities for hemp growers to sell the chaff and flower material for CBD extraction.
“Hemp is a crop that can add to the diversity of cropping rotations on the farm,” Shwaluk wrote in an email response. “A broader range of crops grown on the farm will help with soil and plant health, breaking up pest and disease cycles that can appear from mono-cropping.”
And perhaps one day, it’ll disrupt the energy drink market, too. That’s what Rinzler and the Together Hemp Co. team have planned for their joint endeavour as they work on a hemp milk line to fuel athletes.
Feminine hygiene products and clothing could one day be marketed by the company, too. There are at least 25,000 potential different uses for a plant that amped up a simple smoothie on a surfing trip all those years ago and became the crux of a business plan for the years ahead.
“The big, big picture of Together Hemp is a lifestyle brand,” Rinzler says. “The seed has been planted in my head. We’ll get there eventually.”
Together Hemp Co.
120-C, 69 Wingold Ave., North York, Ont.
togetherhemp.co | 647.360.5514 | @togetherhempco
Strawberry shortcake smoothie
3 cups frozen strawberries
1 ¾ cup vanilla almond milk
¼ cup cashew butter
5 to 7 medjool dates
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup hemp hearts
Place all ingredients in a blender and pulse until smooth and creamy. Add more liquid, if it's too thick.
Hemp heart pesto
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup hemp hearts
3 cups basil leaves, packed
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast or grated Parmesan cheese
½ tablespoon lemon zest
Pinch of salt
1/3 cup olive oil
Blend the garlic, hemp hearts, and nutritional yeast in a blender or food processor. Blend until combined (approximately 30 seconds).
Add basil leaves, lemon zest and salt and purée while slowly adding in the olive oil. Blend until oil is combined and paste forms. Scrap the sides as needed and blend until paste forms and the oil is incorporated.
Salt to taste. Enjoy with pasta, pizza, fresh vegetables and bread.
