Hempthy CBD American Hard Gums 1000mg

A thirty day supply that does not divide

Hempthy makes this sweet in two pouch sizes and describes both of them as a thirty day supply.

On the smaller pouch that works. Thirty sweets, ten milligrams in each, thirty days, one a day. Three hundred milligrams in total. And ten milligrams a day happens to land exactly on the Food Standards Agency's precautionary advice for healthy adults taking CBD as a food supplement.

On this pouch it does not work. There are fifty sweets in it, not thirty, so one a day would last fifty days rather than thirty. And if you did take the thousand milligrams across thirty days as the phrase suggests, that is roughly thirty three milligrams a day, which is more than three times the figure the FSA advises.

The same six words are therefore doing two completely different jobs on two pouches from the same maker, and on this one the arithmetic does not close.

None of the seven UK retailers ranking for this product mentions it. We are not telling you how much to take and nothing here is dosage guidance. We are telling you that a serving claim on the label does not survive being divided, and that the smaller pouch is the one where the numbers and the official advice actually agree.

If a clean one-a-day sweet at the advisory figure is what you want, the three hundred milligram pouch is the honest answer and it is on the same shelf.

The colours here are the plant ones

The full declaration reads: cannabidiol isolate, glucose syrup containing sulphites, maize starch, modified potato starch, citric acid, flavourings, colours from anthocyanins, paprika extract and curcumin, and plant concentrates of sunflower and spirulina.

Every colour in that list is plant-derived. Anthocyanins are the pigments in berries and red cabbage, paprika extract is exactly what it sounds like, and curcumin comes from turmeric.

That is worth pointing out rather than glossing over, because it is not the norm. Elsewhere on our own shelves there are gummies whose declaration includes E102 and E110, which are two of the six colours that UK law requires to be sold with a statement about children's activity and attention. We have written that up in detail on the listing where it applies.

Nothing here needs that statement. This is a genuine point in the product's favour, and it is the kind of comparison only a shop stocking several brands can make, since no manufacturer is going to publish how its rivals colour their sweets.

The one thing to flag in the other direction is sulphites, declared in the glucose syrup. Sulphites are an allergen, they matter to a small number of people quite a lot, and not one of the retailers ranking for this product mentions them.

Isolate, and what that rules out

This is made with CBD isolate at ninety nine point nine per cent purity, which is the plainest form CBD comes in: the cannabinoid separated from everything else the plant contained.

That rules three things out. There is no THC, so none of the per-container arithmetic that dominates the full spectrum products on this site applies here. There are no other cannabinoids, so no CBG, no CBC and nothing that would show up alongside. And there are no plant terpenes, which is why an isolate sweet tastes of whatever it was flavoured with rather than of hemp.

Whether that is a benefit depends entirely on what you came for. If the taste of full spectrum products has put you off, isolate is the answer. If you specifically wanted the rest of the plant, this is the wrong end of the range and the oils elsewhere on the site are where to look.

The rest of the manufacturing detail is more specific than most brands in this catalogue manage: made in the UK, in an ISO9001 accredited facility, vegan, and lab tested. The supplier copy also opens by calling Hempthy an award winning manufacturer without naming an award, which is the sort of claim we leave where we found it.

What they are actually like

American hard gums are the firm, chewy, slightly waxy sweets of the wine gum family rather than the soft bouncy texture of a gelatine bear. Being pectin and starch set rather than gelatine is what makes them vegan, and it also makes them a longer chew.

The flavours are fruit, and they are conventional rather than clever. What matters more is that at twenty milligrams of isolate in a sweet this size there is no herbal or grassy note to work around. Isolate carries no terpenes, so the only taste is the flavouring.

The plant colours are visibly duller than synthetic ones. A sweet coloured with paprika and turmeric does not have the glow that tartrazine gives, and if you compare a bag of these against a brightly coloured competitor they look muted. That is what the ingredient list buys you and it is a fair trade.

Twenty milligrams is a substantial amount for one sweet. This is not a graze-from-the-pouch product in the way a ten milligram sweet is, which brings us neatly back to the arithmetic at the top of the page.

The Hempthy range, by strength

Hempthy runs almost everything in two tiers, a gentler one and a stronger one, which makes it one of the easier brands in this catalogue to navigate once you know the pattern.

The useful question is not which pouch has the bigger number on it. It is how much is in one sweet, because that is the unit you actually consume.

Who should skip this pouch

Anyone starting out. Twenty milligrams in a single sweet is double what the FSA suggests for a whole day, and the three hundred milligram pouch of the identical sweet gives you ten. Start there.

Anyone avoiding sulphites. They are declared in the glucose syrup and there is no version of this sweet without it.

Anyone who wants the rest of the plant. This is isolate, so there are no other cannabinoids and no terpenes in it at all. That is the point of isolate rather than a shortcoming, but it is worth knowing before ordering.

And anyone expecting a soft gummy. Hard gums are firm and chewy by design, closer to a wine gum than to a bear, and the sugar-free gummies in the same range are the softer texture.