In the past, hemp seed has generally been a food of the impoverished social classes,
or a famine food. Often the whole seed, including the hull, was eaten. Crushed
peanut-butter type preparations have been produced from hempseed in Europe for
centuries, but were rather gritty since technology for removing the hulls was
rudimentary, and interest in producing commercial hulled hempseed for culinary
purposes dates back only to about 1990. In some areas of Southeast Asia, the hull
was removed byfiltration, after grinding the seed in water. The resulting hempseed
“milk”was then heated until the proteins solidified into curds, which were subse-
quently pressed to form a solid mass, much like tofu from soy, but without the need
for chemical precipitants.
In very recent times hemp seeds have been “discovered” to have
nutritional-therapeutic, medicinal properties. In fact, hempseed has been employed
in the treatment of various health disorders for millennia in traditional eastern
medicine (Callaway 2004 ). Historical accounts indicate that“hemp seeds”were
used for many medical purposes: as an analgesic, for sores and skin diseases, and
for coughs, jaundice and colic. However, it is unclear whether hemp seeds alone
were employed, or also the fruit bracts which would have added cannabinoids and
terpenes. In ancient China, various parts of the plant were used medicinally,
including the foliage and roots (Wang and Wei 2012 ). In recent times in China,
hempseed has been used to treat blood problems and constipation (Wang and Wei
2012 ). A traditional Chinese medicine called“hemp seed pill”(made in part with
hempseed) has been demonstrated to be safe and effective for alleviating consti-
pation (Cheng et al. 2011 ). Maltos-Cannabis, a beverage formulated with hemp-
seed, was popular in Scandinavia in the early twentieth century as“a health
medicine that has been employed with great success against pulmonary diseases,
anemia, gastric catarrh, scrofula, neurasthenia, asthenia and emaciation”(Dahl and
Frank 2011 ).
The cultivation of hemp as an oilseed crop reached a zenith in nineteenth and
early twentieth century Russia, when, in addition to the edible uses, the seed oil was
employed for making soap, paints and varnishes. Until about 1800, hempseed oil
was one of the more popular lighting oils, being cheaper than whale oil, but
kerosene subsequently replaced both for this purpose. However, for most of history
the seeds were of very minor economic importance, and by the middle of the
twentieth century, commercial use was negligible, and cultivated plant selections
suitable for dedicated oilseed production were virtually unavailable until the 1990s.
For most of the latter part of the twentieth century the seeds were usually employed
as wild bird and poultry feed, although occasionally also as human food. World
hemp seed production (mostly in China) fell from about 70,000 t in the early 1960s
to about 34,000 t at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
At the close of the twentieth century, reminiscent of how new hempfiber
applications resurrected thefiber crop mostly in Europe, a similar development of
oilseed products, particularly in Canada, witnessed the founding of an expanding
hempseed industry. Oilseed usage increased substantially by the year 2000.
Cannabis sativais now being grown as a major new source of edible and industrial
oilseed products. With the growing recognition of the health benefits from the
18 E. Small