You’ve heard of Skinny Cow Ice Cream, Skinny Girl margaritas and light beer. Now, get ready for diet pot. It's gaining in popularity as marijuana becomes more mainstream.
Well known for its ability to make people plant their faces in pints of Ben & Jerry’s for hours at a time, marijuana is widely considered something that induces hunger. There is a compound in the weed, however, called THCV that does just the opposite. Some pot producers are now trying to breed strains of the drug that are rich in THCV as a way to stave off the notorious munchies.
“We have people coming in all the time asking for pot that won’t make them hungry,” said Lacey Wallace of Anacortes’s High Society pot shop.
Researchers with GW Pharmaceuticals have discovered THCV can increase the amount of energy the body burns, as well as have an impact on the level of fat in the body and its response to insulin, a hormone that controls the sugar levels in the blood.
Many growers are now racing to develop the perfect skinny weed to take to market.
“They are able to go through and genetically manipulate the strains to have higher THCV, which gives you that appetite suppressing effect,” said Wallace.
There are already several strains of marijuana that are high in THCV on the market including XJ-13, Blue Dream and Durban Poison.
