Hemp Seed Oil Extraction and Stable Emulsion Formulation with Hemp Protein Isolates

Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is traditionally processed for its high fibre content in the textile industry, but in recent years, it has come to constitute a new raw material in the food industry. Hemp seeds, but also the seed meal, are rich in protein (25%) and oil (30%), the latter consisting of 80–90% of unsaturated fatty acids; they represent a rich and balanced nutritional source to replace the classic animal sources, and they are used in the food industry to supply new food trends. In this work, the hemp oil extraction process was studied, taking advantage of the supercritical CO2 and ultrasounds, and comparing it with the exhaustive Soxhlet technique. The residual cake from extraction is a protein-rich waste that can be used for food formulations. From this perspective, the hemp oil extracted was used to formulate emulsions with the consistency of vegetable drinks, enriched with standard hemp protein isolate and stabilized with the addition of 0.05% w/w of thickening polysaccharides (Gellan gum). The formulated emulsion is stable, and this can encourage the process improvement and the use of the waste from hemp seed extraction for the valorisation of by-products and waste to obtain complete food products with high nutritional value.