“Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years,” says Skip Meador, co-counder of edibles producer Marqaha, adding that “it’s always been the whole plant” that was used.
More popularly known as the “entourage effect,” the whole plant extract approach focuses primarily on the flower bud, but also includes the fan leaves and the trim. Meador explains that “it gets down to preserving the terpenes, the chlorophyll, the CBD levels and THC levels.”
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When he’s extracting from the plant to make Marqaha products, he uses the full bud, because the goal is “trying to represent the plant that you’re extracting as much as possible, and then cleaning that up so it works well within the product.”
Not every type of edible works well with the whole plant, so it becomes a matter of matching the strain to the product.
“If you’re going to make a chocolate bar or a gummy, it’s much harder to represent the whole plant in there and have it just taste good,” Meador says. “We design the products to absorb the whole plant as much as possible.”
