All About Edibles

Betty's Eddies

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The Science of Eddies

Betty’s Eddies deliciously handcrafted fruit chews feature all-natural blends of full-spectrum cannabis, plant-based cannabinoids, and herbal supplements & vitamins, to help you feel your Betty best no matter what life throws at you.

Whether you “chews” Betty’s Eddies to potentially help you sleep, relax, or enhance a social experience, it’s important to know how edibles work. Have you heard wild, outrageous claims about an edibles experience? For example, two friends eat the exact same number of brownies from the same pan that they made together at home. One person doesn’t feel any difference in their body, even hours after consumption, while they watch their friend experience an intense high that lasts throughout the day. This is most likely due to the number one reason that people have varying edible experiences: the body’s chemistry. Much like we have different levels of serotonin in our brains or melanin in our skin, we have different levels of an enzyme in our liver that breaks down the most active ingredient in cannabis: THC.

THC is what we call a cannabinoid, which is a component of the cannabis plant that attaches to receptors in your brain and body feel a specific way. Believe it or not, there is an entire system in your body (like the digestive, nervous, or endocrine system) called the endocannabinoid system that attaches and reacts only to cannabinoids! There are hundreds of cannabinoids, but THC may be the most famous one, as it’s responsible for the “high” we associate with cannabis consumption.

Creating “Activated” THC to Make Eddies Effective

The cannabinoid that comes straight out of the cannabis plant is known as “THCa,” which has little psychoactive effect. If you were to eat a bud of cannabis right off the plant, you wouldn’t feel a thing, even if it was rich in THCa levels.

When we smoke flower, THCa converts into THC after we light it on fire and inhale it. Let’s think about a lightbulb: when we hold it in our hand and look at it, it’s still a lightbulb, but it doesn’t serve much purpose if we are just holding it in a dark room. When we connect that lightbulb to an electricity source, it then fills the room with light and serves its purpose. Similarly, this is how THCa and THC are related. Both are THC, but THCa isn’t psychoactive until you heat it up and it becomes THC and it is absorbed in your digestive system (like your lightbulb isn’t effective until it’s connected to electricity).

When we make edibles, we have to make “activated THC” so we can feel its effects. The flower has to go through a process called decarboxylation, or decarbing, to convert the THCa to THC. To do this, we cook the flower at a low temperature. In a professional kitchen environment, this process is precise and monitored by experts in cannabis science using calibrated thermometers and high caliber equipment. When making homemade edibles, this is often a step that gets skipped, overlooked, or overdone. Although cooking at home with cannabis may be appealing, if the amateur chef does not follow the appropriate steps, their edibles will be ineffective and prove to be a waste of time and resources. It’s worth noting that edibles purchased in a legal market are lab tested, precision dosed and offer a consistent experience.

Delta-9 THC vs Hydroxy-11 THC: What’s the Difference?

The famous, most common THC found in nearly all cannabis-derived products that we have been referring to is formally known as “delta-9 THC.” When you inhale delta-9 THC, it remains the same when it enters your bloodstream. However, when you digest delta-9 THC, it actually converts into a completely different chemical compound called “11-hydroxy THC.” This conversion happens in your liver due to a specific enzyme that breaks down delta-9 THC in order for your body absorb it. 11-hydroxy THC has been found to be far more potent than delta-9 THC, which may be a reason many cannabis users report that edibles offer a different, more intense high compared to smoking.

The Short Version

In summary, THC must go through a change so our body can feel its effects. We cook THC to change it in our favor. We eat the activated THC and the chemistry in our body changes THC into another chemical. Professionally made edibles offer the most consistent experiences and accurate dose. Let's learn more about finding the right dose in our next blog post, "How much THC is right for me?".