As CBD Oil’s popularity continues to increase, more people are gaining an interest in consuming CBD-infused foods and beverages. Cooking with CBD oil or dropping CBD into your favorite drinks is a great way to explore CBD with your food and drink because you have complete control over the quality and quantity of CBD used. Also, more ready-to-go CBD-infused foods and beverages are popping up in convenience stores, grocery stores, and CBD shops.
Maybe you prefer the latter or love the idea of both. Either way, today we’re going to bring you some useful information about CBD as it relates to food and drink, as well as a few ideas for ways to maximize the taste and efficacy of your CBD-infused meal or beverage.
A Few Tips to Consider
Firstly, all of the same CBD concepts that apply to taking CBD without food or drink are still applicable. That includes making sure your CBD is a high-quality CBD oil in the first place, has an appropriate potency, etc.
If you’d love to read more about how to pick the right, high-quality CBD that’s right for you, feel free to browse our previous blog posts, as they contain a wealth of information about how to select the right CBD, how to compare CBD products, what to look for in a CBD product, and much, much more.
Once you have a high-quality premium CBD tincture at your disposal, you’re ready to start exploring with CBD-infused foods and beverages. Here are a couple of additional things to consider when pairing CBD oil with meals.
- Fat Content
Some studies have suggested that taking CBD oil with fatty foods as opposed to lean foods or on an empty stomach can actually help your body absorb more of CBD’s beneficial properties, so to ensure you’re maximizing the benefits of CBD with food and drink while minimizing waste, it’s good to pair CBD oil with fat.
That said, that doesn’t mean you should hit your local drive-thru with CBD in hand. Pair your CBD oil with healthy fats like the ones that come from olive oil, avocados, nuts, and other sources of healthy fats to ensure you’re maximizing your CBD absorption without ingesting too much saturated fat or other forms of unhealthy fats.
- Heat
You may want to avoid high-temp cooking with CBD oil to avoid potency loss or losing CBD to evaporation. A good way to avoid this is by using CBD oil as a dressing or garnish, rather than introducing it during the actual cooking process.
Mixing it into already oily foods like dressings and pesto is a great way to go.
- Flavor
An unflavored CBD oil will help ensure you’re not adding unwanted flavors to your meal. Perhaps you don’t want lemon cake flavoring in your caprese salad, and we wouldn’t blame you.
Conversely, the flavor of your CBD oil might even help enhance the flavor of your food or drink. Think mint, for example. That might go great in a CBD tea, cocktail, or baked good.
Experimenting with unflavored and flavored CBD oils is the best way to discover what dishes, drinks, and CBD flavors jive the with your own, unique palette.
- Sweets
CBD oil, especially in unflavored variants, tends to have a bitter, earthy flavor. One approach people take when pairing CBD with foods is to incorporate it into their desserts.
This way, the power of the dessert’s sweetness overtakes the earthy flavor of the CBD, making the taste of it less noticeable.
This earthy bitterness is especially apparent is lower-quality CBD, which is another reason why using the best CBD you can get from the get-go is ideal.
- Don’t Over Do It
Being strategic with your CBD quantity, frequency, and potency, doesn’t go away just because you’re using it with food instead of taking it directly. Make sure to keep track of how much CBD you’re taking and how often so that you can gauge is efficacy and be able to increase quantity or potency if need be, just as if you were taking a CBD tincture.
Pro Tip: Store your CBD in a cool, dry place to help preserve its freshness.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few ideas for incorporating CBD into your meals:
-CBD and herbal tea are a match made in heaven.
-Combining CBD with your salad dressings is a great way to pepper some CBD into your diet, and also take advantage of the already existent fat in your dressing to help absorb even more of your CBD’s beneficial properties. (Avocado is great, too!)
-CBD and baked goods can be a great combo, especially if you’re not a huge fan of unflavored CBD. The sweetness of your cookie, brownie, or cake, can help overtake the flavor of the CBD. (Although, there are plenty of flavored and quite tasty CBD tinctures available on the market today.)
-Try placing your CBD in blended shakes or pressed juices.
-CBD in cocktails seems to be a growing trend as well.
The opportunities for combining CBD oil with your food and drink are endless. Feel free to use some of these suggestions as a starting point or combine CBD with the foods and drinks you already know, love, and enjoy.
If you’re newer to CBD or would like to read more about taking CBD without food, feel free to visit our blog post on Mindful Consumption. For advice to help you navigate the plethora of CBD products available on the market today, our CBD Buying Tips post can definitely help with that. And if you’d prefer to read up on the basics of CBD like what it is and what it’s for, we have a CBD 101 post for that, too.
Thanks for stopping by our CBD Blog today and stay tuned because we’re getting closer and closer to launching our very own line of premium CBD tinctures. We’ve strived for months perfecting our product in an attempt to bring you a CBD Oil with no compromises. We hope you’ll love them, and if you sign up for our newsletter, you’ll be the first to know when they’re available for purchase and will even receive exclusive offers for being a subscriber.
Until next time,
-A.P.N.
