Why We Don't Flavor Our CBD

Not everybody loves the natural flavor of hemp, which is the plant from which our full spectrum CBD is derived. It tastes green and earthy and quite strong on the pallet. It can even be experienced as “hot” on the tongue and in the throat for some people. So why don’t we flavor our products? Doesn't a spoonful of sugar help the medicine go down? 

Avoiding Flavor Burnout

The first reason has to do with fatigue. The body tends to fatigues on certain artificial flavors or even flavor combinations. Yet it doesn’t seem to fatigue of natural, organic flavor. We don’t have the science for you on this principle like we typically do. This is just something anecdotal that we’ve observed. Think about it this way: if you go to your favorite restaurant and get your favorite food it's enjoyable, but would it still be if you ate it every day? 

Natural Associations

Another reason has to do with association. There’s an expression in the sciences that “we don’t like babies because they are cute, but rather babies are cute because we like them”. It taps into our genetic instincts to preserve our species. Babies being cute makes us want to protect them and keep the species going. So, we’ve evolved to think they’re cute.

That same expression has been applied to foods in the wild for which our ancestors used to forage or hunt. We might say: “we don’t like (natural) sugar (such as those found in fruits or vegetables) because it is sweet, but rather sugar is sweet because we like it”. Or better said, we’ve evolved to like sugar (natural sugar, like those found in fruits and vegetables, not refined sugar) because it is full of carbohydrates that nourish us. A similar concept can be applied to plants.

We have evolved to recognize that when we’re eating plants, these are things that nourish us. That is what your body registers when that earthy flavor is on your pallet.

We’ve had a relationship with plants generally and the hemp plant specifically for tens of thousands of years. Throughout human history, we’ve evolved with plants. It’s not an accident that plants are surviving among us and have certain compounds which work with our bodies in certain beneficial ways.

As a result, there’s something in the taste of it that we inherently recognize. It’s possible that even the taste profile itself is part of the cascade of biological reactions that lead to the plant’s positive impact on our bodies. Consider the fact that the simple act of smelling food creates a certain sensation in our body, for example salivating. It triggers a preparedness.

If there’s a chance that our bodies make an association between smell or taste and the impact on our bodies, we want to include that in the experience of Flora Sophia CBD. Maybe if we disguised it as chocolate or pizza your body would expect something entirely different and you wouldn’t get the full benefit. 

We Leave It As We Found It

Masking the hemp flavor doesn’t mean the cannabinoids aren’t going to work, of course. That’s nonsense. But there is a lot we still just don’t know. For example, there are interesting studies in fields such as homeopathy that suggest it’s important not to mix certain types of flavoring with certain remedies in case it should confuse your body or have an impact on the desired reaction. Mint, for example, has been shown to be an antidote to the energies of other herbal medicines. 

We know that nature is complicated. We also know that hemp plants have evolved alongside humans for an extremely long period of time in ways that clearly benefit us. We simply don’t want to risk interrupting those benefits in any way because we don’t know exactly what they are and why they do what they do.

Flora Sophia is committed to bringing you full spectrum hemp extract the way we found it, and exactly as nature intended.