Coffee’s reputation as a high energy drink spans thousands of years, starting from legends of goats helping themselves to a shrubful of coffee berries and subsequently alarming their shepherds by refusing to sleep at night. Tea follows a more mellow trajectory throughout history. However, many still take tea as a way to energise themselves before a full day, or to...

The road to legal status has been a protracted one for CBD. From flying under the Home Office’s radar for years to fighting the disentangle itself from marijuana and cannabis, cannabidiol is finally emerging from the grey area it has occupied until recently. CBD products now abound in the UK, which has emerged as the world’s second largest consumer of the...

When the UK government decriminalised the use of hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) in 2018 mainly because of its medicinal benefits, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the market for CBD would finally establish itself as the legitimate industry it always sought to become. Things turned out to be a little more complicated.  CBD occurs naturally in cannabis plants. But unlike THC - the...

When the Food Standards Agency (FSA) announced in February 2020 its intention to compel companies producing, distributing and selling CBD products to obtain Novel Foods Certification, it may have looked to outsiders like an attempt to clamp down on creeping legalisation. Motivations of this kind, however, are beyond the FSA's remit, which is restricted to food safety. As far as the FSA...