ON THE SIDE: HEMP MILK

What goes better with cookies than good old milk? Yet, if you’re lactose intolerant and you have to look for an alternative beverage to wash down your cookie, one that you can enjoy among the several available, such as soy and rice almond, is now hemp.

Yes, hemp.

Now, the more jaded lot will counter that cookies are consumed after hemp. But not anymore. Some clever folks in Manitoba, Canada, are producing Hemp Bliss organic hemp milk.

Leaving the name safely aside, the Manitoba Harvest product satisfies not only folks who have dietary sensitivities but also strict vegetarians, consumers concerned about growth hormones administered to dairy cows, animal rights activists and even certain environmentalists, not to mention those consumers who prefer plant-derived milk to the cow kind.

Hemp foods have been growing in popularity and distribution, and don’t prompt law enforcement scrutiny because they don’t have the psycho-reactive ingredient that gets some hemp-derived products in trouble. Indeed, what’s in Hemp Bliss is likely to lend to its larger popularity in society as the product includes 1,200 milligrams of omega-3 essential fatty acids—as well as omega-6 and omega-9—and 5 grams of protein in each serving.

Whether it provides any corrective affect on glaucoma was not covered in the company’s literature.