Hempthy CBD Bubblegum Bottles 900mg

It has a Novel Foods application number, and that is not the same as approval

Published on this product is a Novel Foods application reference: RP349.

We have now written up a good many ingestible CBD products, and on every single one of them the honest position has been that no authorisation exists and we claim none. This is the first that carries a specific reference at all, so it deserves explaining properly rather than being either ignored or waved about as a badge.

There are three states in the UK system, not two.

A product with no application at all has never entered the process. A product whose application has been validated by the Food Standards Agency sits on a public list, and validated means the agency is satisfied enough information was submitted for a risk assessment to begin. Products in that middle state, marked validated or awaiting evidence, may remain on the market in England and Wales while the assessment continues. A product that has actually been authorised has come out the far end, and very few CBD products have.

An RP number is an individual reference for an application. It puts a product in the middle row, which is meaningfully better than the first row and is not the third row.

One limit we should be straight about. We can see that the reference is published. We have not independently confirmed this product's current entry or its status on the FSA list, and we are not going to imply we have. If that distinction matters to you, the list is public and searchable.

So: better than nothing, not the same as authorised, and considerably more information than any other product we have written up has offered.

A third colour system from the same brand

The declaration on this tub gives its colours as E129 and E133. Two of them.

That is a different list again from Hempthy's fizzy range, which carries four: E102, E129, E133 and E132. And different again from the American hard gums, which use no synthetic colours at all.

Three products, three palettes, one manufacturer. We have written about the first two on their own listings and this is the third, so here they are together for the first time.

E129 is allura red and is one of the six colours UK law singles out, so a statement about children's activity and attention applies to this tub as it does to the fizzy range. What has changed is that tartrazine is not in this one, and the list is half the length.

None of that is hidden. It is simply that nobody, including the brand, has ever set the three side by side, and if a specific colour is what you are avoiding then the palette varies by range rather than by brand.

Thirty milligrams in a bottle

Thirty gummies in the tub at thirty milligrams of CBD isolate each, nine hundred milligrams in total. That is the joint strongest piece Hempthy makes, level with its twelve hundred milligram fizzy tub.

Worth putting next to something. The Food Standards Agency advises healthy adults to take no more than ten milligrams of CBD a day from food supplements. One of these bottles is three times that figure.

Nothing here is dosage guidance. It does mean this is not a graze-from-the-tub product in the way a ten milligram sweet is, and it is not where anyone new to CBD should start. Hempthy's three hundred milligram pouches give ten milligrams a piece and are the sensible entry point.

The rest is familiar from the brand: CBD isolate at ninety nine point nine per cent, made in the UK, vegan, stated THC free, and sulphites declared in the glucose syrup. This is the seventh Hempthy product we have written up and the seventh time no UK retailer ranking for it mentions the sulphites.

What a bubblegum bottle tastes like

Bubblegum as a sweet flavour is its own invention rather than an attempt at anything real, and this is a fairly classic version of it: sweet, slightly powdery, with that faintly medicinal top note that people either find nostalgic or cannot stand.

The bottle shape is the traditional cola-bottle mould, so the gummy is thicker through the middle than a bear and chewier for it. No sour coating on this range, which is a real difference from the fizzy products: this is straightforwardly sweet.

At thirty milligrams of isolate there is still nothing to taste of the CBD, since isolate carries no terpenes. Everything you taste is sugar, acid and flavouring.

The chew is the thing worth knowing. A thicker gummy takes longer, which at this strength is arguably useful, because it makes having a second one a decision rather than a reflex.

Where this sits in the Hempthy range

Hempthy runs three per-piece tiers across its sweets: ten milligrams, twenty, and thirty. The tub formats sit at the top of that.

The bottles come in two flavours and are otherwise identical to each other, in the same way the fizzy range shares one recipe across its flavours.

Who should skip this tub

Anyone new to CBD. Thirty milligrams in one sweet is three times the daily figure the FSA suggests, and there is no sensible way to take less than a whole gummy. The three hundred milligram pouches exist for exactly this reason.

Anyone avoiding allura red. It is in this tub, and the hard gums are the only Hempthy sweets with no listed colours at all.

Anyone avoiding sulphites, declared across every Hempthy sweet without exception.

Anyone who reads the Novel Foods reference as approval. It is an application reference. That is genuinely better than nothing and it is not the same thing, which is why it is at the top of this page rather than in a badge.

And anyone who dislikes bubblegum flavour. It is a strong and divisive one, and the cherry cola tub is the same sweet without it.