The bakery-restaurant chain Le Pain Quotidien will start selling cannabis bread in all its 54 bakeries and restaurants in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and the UK from Friday.
The bread – which the chain calls "the most ecological bread ever" – consists of a mix of peeled and unpeeled cannabis seeds, flour from ground cannabis seeds, Le Pain Quotidien's own sourdough and flour. Hemp seeds from the plant 'Cannabis Sativa L.' are healthy and ecological, the Belgian bakery chain stated.
"Cannabis has a bad name because of marijuana, but this bread has nothing to do with that. Our customers can rest assured, and we also communicate clearly about it," CEO Annick Van Overstraeten said in a press release.
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Still, it was legally challenging to make and sell the bread in Belgium, the chain said, despite the "extremely low THC content" in the seeds.
The chain did have to get an official "derogation" from Belgium's Federal Public Health Service for every production using cannabis seeds until the end of last year, based on a lab test.
The bread was developed by Belgian founder Alain Coumont, in collaboration with Canbe Farm from the Walloon Brabant province.
