Hemp—grown by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson long before it was deemed an illegal crop in the U.S. in 1937—is a plant of seemingly endless uses. Grown for thousands of years for its food and fiber value, hemp can be made into cloth, paper (the Declaration of Independence was actually written on paper made from hemp), fiberboard, posts and beams, lubricants, paint, fuel, and many other useful products.

Yet perhaps hemp’s greatest strength lies in its nutritional value. If you were to ask a group of nutritionists which plant has the most value to the health and well-being of humans, the answer would almost undoubtedly be hemp!

Hemp contains every essential amino acid and essential fatty acid (EFA) necessary to achieve and maintain health, and no other plant provides these essential amino and fatty acids in such a highly digestible form. Hemp is also chock-full of B vitamins, iron, vitamin E, and fiber. Sixty-five percent of the protein in hemp seeds is globulin edistin; the remaining 35 percent is albumin protein. This combination makes hemp protein digestible in its raw state, thereby giving it the highest readily accessible protein content of any plant.

Getting the nutritional benefits of hemp is easy because there are so many ways the plant can be used. Hemp seeds are 25 percent protein and 40 percent high-quality oil. They can be toasted for a snack or ground to make flour for baked goods. Because the nutritional benefits of hemp are available when the seeds are used whole, you can add them to bread dough made from other grains, or sprinkle them over salads. The seeds can also be ground into a powder for protein drinks and smoothies, or processed like peanuts and other nuts to make hemp butter.

Hemp oil makes a great-tasting choice for cooking, and a nice change from more-common cooking oils such as olive and canola. Its light, slightly nutty flavor blends beautifully with vinegar to make salad dressing worthy of a five-star restaurant. Hemp oil is also an excellent choice for dressing vegetable sides such as corn on the cob and baked potatoes.

Designed by Mother Nature to meet human nutritional needs, hemp oil contains in perfect ratio both the linoleic omega-6 and linolenic omega-3 EFAs that our bodies need but cannot synthesize. EFAs are the building blocks of longer chain fats, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), known to be essential to brain development in infants and currently being researched for their role in preventing or reducing the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly.

As an added benefit, hemp oil retains more of the fragile EFAs after processing than do other oils. Of course, these fatty acids, which researchers now believe can help prevent heart attacks and reduce inflammation, and may be effective in preventing cancer as well, are also found in sardines, mackerel, salmon, bluefish, herring, and tuna. But choosing to meet your daily fatty acid needs with hemp instead of fish means not ingesting mercury at the same time!

—Julie Crawshaw