When California voters legalized cannabis for recreational purposes in 2016, Katherine Knowlton was a culinary school grad living in San Francisco, where she worked as a food stylist and recipe developer.
| Credit: Blake Bronstad
“I was super pumped up about cannabis becoming legal, but I couldn’t really eat any of the edibles,” said Knowlton, whose “gut health challenges” made her avoid refined sugars. “Everything was gummy and everything else was chocolate. They were just candy.”
She was well aware that many people just bought marijuana products to get high, but Knowlton knew many others using it as part of their wellbeing regime, tapping into cannabis to help with relaxation and sleeping (like her) or for the plant’s anti-inflammatory properties. “All of these gummies are putting sugar or corn syrup, which are inflammatory, together with cannabis,” she said. “It’s a counterintuitive thing.”