There are a surprising number of cookbooks featuring cannabis. Titles like Bong Appetit and High Cookery are packed with wicked weed recipes for a tasty trip — or to satisfy the munchies.
To be clear, the Cannabinoid Cookbook is not one of these. Instead of hippy highs, it concentrates on the medicinal effects of marijuana. Co-authors Dr Joseph Feuerstein and Daniel Green, bypass tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound that gives the high, focusing instead on CBD, another compound from the marijuana plant that has, in recent years found its way into numerous foodstuffs.
Dr Feuerstein grew up in west London. “I did my medical training at University of London hospitals, Guy’s, St Thomas and King’s and then went to Israel for my army service. I was in the two special forces of the navy for four years as a doctor.”
He left for the United States 20 years ago and did a residency at Columbia and a fellowship with Dr Andrew Weil, whom he describes as the “guru of alternative medicine in America”.
“For the last 14 years I was director of integrated medicine at probably one of the largest integrated medicine centres in the US,” he says. “We saw about 15,000 patients a year. I left to pursue different interests, but during that time, I’d seen probably about 45,000 patients by the time and, I left I didn’t use drugs for any of them. I used nutrition, acupuncture, meditation and botanicals.”
He was sent patients who could not or would not take medication. “They were at the end of what Western medicine could do and that’s why they sent patients to us. It was important that I was trained in Western medicine, so I understand how this all works.”
In 1964, Israeli postdoctoral student Raphael Mechoulam began to research whether there were beneficial chemicals in marijuana and isolated the first cannabinoid. It took more than 20 years for scientists to discover the receptors in our bodies are activated by the cannabinoids.
In his work, Dr Feuerstein had found that pharmaceutical grade, high-dose CBD can have a beneficial effect on our own endocannabinoid system (ECS). The ECS controls our response to pain and our appetite: “Stimulation of the ECS also calms us down, which is why it is useful for treating pain, poor sleep, or anxiety” .
He noticed that many manufactured CBD supplements used black pepper. “It seemed random, so I researched it and found that in black pepper was an essential oil that contained a cannabinoid that stimulates the CB2 receptors. I thought that was kind of cool and wondered if there were other CBD-rich foods.”
His research unearthed various food and spices containing a variety of CBD’s offering different cannabinoids. “Eating a diet rich in these foods and spices will increase stimulation of your ECS, calm you down during times of stress, help you sleep better when things are on your mind, and reduce pain and inflammation when your body is distressed. Increasing the activity of that system every day by eating a cannabinoid-rich diet can aid people suffering from pain, insomnia, or anxiety.”
He enlisted Green, a chef, US television personality and his co-presenter on web-based health show, Condition Kitchen, on health website EverydayHealth.com in which the pair recommend recipes for patients with a variety of conditions.
The pair identified 11 ingredients providing a range of cannabinoids. The list includes turmeric; rosemary; black truffles; cacao; black pepper and cinnamon as well as foods containing Omega-3s.
Green, whose culinary career was inspired by his search for a healthy way of eating and who has published two books on the Paleo diet, created recipes using as many of the ingredients as possible. Each chapter focuses on an individual ingredient, but he includes others from the list to increase that effect.
“Many of the ingredients — like turmeric, rosemary and omega-3 foods, for example — were already known to have health benefits. The only surprise might be the cacao,” says Green who explains that incorporating cacao into every day recipes was more of a challenge than some of the other ingredients. “My style isn’t to be too ‘clever’ with ingredients. I like classics and I like making a classic a bit healthier for you. Dishes like beef with cacao sauce or cacao-crusted New York strip steaks were a not the normal cooking I would do, but we had to have some recipes like that, or it would only have been desserts in that chapter.”
Chocophiles will also enjoy sweet, cacao-based treats like peppermint hot chocolate, hot cacao and indulgent chocolate truffles.
It’s not just chocolate truffles that you should be stocking up on. The fungus-related, savoury variety is also packed with something Italian scientists term a “bliss molecule” —anandamide — a cannabinoid we make in our own bodies. Dr Feuerstein says that the researchers have a theory that the truffles make anandamide, to attract animals. “When the animals eat the fungal fruits, they then spread truffle spores all over the countryside in their droppings, causing more truffles to grow.”
When we eat truffles (which Green adds to dishes like scrambled eggs, pasta and risotto) we also gain a range of health benefits, which include a range of minerals, protein and antioxidants. “Compounds in truffles have been shown to kill liver, colon and breast cancer cells in laboratory tests” writes Dr Feuerstein n the book.
Every ingredient highlighted in the book has its own health-giving properties so it’s definitely worth getting some more of them into your diet.
The Cannabinoid Cookbook (Mango Publishing) is out now , £18.99
