The edibles revolution is fast upon us. Those sloppily sliced, old-school, burnt brownies of years past have shape-shifted into precisely dosed, strain-specific, beautifully packaged, discretely sized morsels served up as gummies, mints, sours, truffles, chocolates, Turkish delights, dried fruit, potato chips, and “cheese crunchers,” whatever cheese crunchers are. And the flavors? You can probably still find infused Rice Krispies Treats outside of a Phish show, but today you’re looking at flavors ranging from Strawberry Spacewalk to Moroccan Mint, from Pear Kimchi to Boxed Wine to Spaghetti & Meatballs. Perhaps because of these improvements, edibles are growing in popularity: Over the next four years, the edibles market will grow 65 percent, to $6.6 billion, according to the Colorado-based BDSA, which provides market forecasting for the cannabis industry.
And yet the problem with edibles remains: You pop one in your pie hole and you wait. And you wait and wait and wait until, convinced it’s never going to kick in, you take another. Which is precisely when it kicks in and, soon, you’re quite high—maybe even couch-locked, nauseous, or anxious—and the night quietly implodes.
But what if you could optimize your edible experience? What if you could make it more predictable, more efficient, more potent? A few strategies from industry pros:
1. Take your edible with food in your belly
The question everyone asks, a budtender at my local dispensary told me, is whether to take an edible on an empty stomach or with food. An empty stomach will likely bring the high on faster, but if you consume it with food—either a few minutes before or after a meal—the high will be higher and may even last a bit longer. I asked Jessie Kater, the SVP of innovation at Curaleaf, a cannabis powerhouse with 152 dispensaries in 19 states, to explain why the full-stomach strategy is so effective. He told me that because cannabinoids, the chemical compounds found in the plant that elicit the various effects we feel when using cannabis, “are oil-based and fat-soluble, they don’t get absorbed in your mouth or upper GI. Instead,” he explained, they need to take a longer trip: through the stomach, into the small intestine, “and into the liver, where enzymes convert the cannabinoids into something your body can absorb.” Which takes time. Usually, a lot of time. Like an hour or more. (One note: This story focuses on edibles that require, you know, teeth, and not on beverages, tinctures, or sprays. Those are water-soluble, and enter the bloodstream quickly through membranes in the mouth.)
2. It matters what you eat
Fat, fat, fat.
A salad won’t do. Fruit won’t do. Chicken won’t do. The key is to get some fat into your system because enveloping the cannabinoids in dietary fats helps your liver absorb and metabolize them faster and more efficiently. In fact, Alex Kato, who manages research and development at Kiva, a California-based edibles pioneer, says “some studies have shown that eating a high-fat meal before ingesting an edible can increase the concentration of cannabinoids in your bloodstream by up to four times.” What kind of food are we talking about? “Diner food,” says Kato, whose handiwork is available in thousands of dispensaries. “A classic high-fat meal is two fried eggs and butter, a couple pieces of bacon, and a glass of whole milk.” Janice Newell Bissex, once the dietician to the U.S. Senate and now a holistic cannabis practitioner in Melrose, Mass., takes a more plant-based approach to edible-friendly fats: She likes avocado, olive oil, even a few walnuts. If you don’t feel like tanking up, both Bissex and Kater suggest taking MCT oil, a fatty, coconut-oil supplement sold at health-food stores in capsules or drops.
3. The physical size of your dispensary-bought edible does not matter.
Nor does its shape, flavor, or whether it’s a gummy, a mint, a chocolate, or a piece of taffy. The dosing is waaaay more precise these days than even a few years ago, so what matters is the THC content listed on the label. That said, it’s possible that the fat in a chocolate edible might help your high around the margins, especially if you’re not able to find a fistful of bacon.
4. You don’t need to keep your edible under your tongue or let it linger in your mouth until it dissolves.
Another question that budtenders hear all the time. Swirling a gummy in your mouth for 10 minutes or letting it sit quietly under your tongue (“sublingual” is the pro term) has zero bearing on your high, says Kiva’s Kato, “because the membranes in your mouth don’t do a good job of absorbing oils.” In fact, he says, what researchers found is that users tend to swallow the spit so it all ends up going the digestive route anyway. Better, he says, to enjoy the flavor but then chew, swallow, and get the cannabinoids all at once.
A little bear can still pack a big punch.
5. Manage your tolerance.
“I really try hard to keep my consumption to three or four nights a week,” Curaleaf’s Kater told me. “And I do that specifically to manage my tolerance, to keep my effective dose low and my experience sharp.” Especially at higher levels, he told me, “you find that your tolerance builds rather quickly.” So for the optimal, feels-like-the-first-time experience, a 24- to 48-hour break is a good plan for regular nibblers.
6. Boost your metabolism.
Just as three Manhattans may leave you charmingly talkative while your drinking partner lurches for the exit to “get a little fresh air,” the same 5 mg edible will affect people in different ways and will kick in at different times. This is due to an untold number of individual physiological factors, one of which is a person’s metabolic rate; a faster metabolism typically means that your body will absorb the cannabinoids more quickly. In the long-term, you can boost your metabolic rate with weight training and the like; in the short term, says Bissex, a cup of coffee or green tea “could, in theory, result in somewhat shorter onset times.” Of course, the faster the onset, the more quickly your high will end.
7. Look at the label
Every edible-maker I spoke with is trying to reduce onset time because as cannabis use becomes more normalized, the idea of having to wait an hour-plus to feel all warm and gooey no longer seems, well, normal. A few companies (including Curaleaf, whose fast-acting Jams were released in March, and Wana, Good Day Farm, Kanha, Quicky, among others) have managed to crack this problem to a greater or lesser extent with the use nanoencapsulation which, essentially, wraps the cannabis’ fat-soluble molecules in water-soluble molecules, allowing them to be absorbed into the bloodstream and bypass the liver. The result is a high that hits within five to fifteen minutes. My best guess? By year’s end, you’ll be seeing the words “fast-acting!” and “nano!” on edible packages at a dispensary near you.
Bill Shapiro is the former editor-in-chief of LIFE Magazine; on Instagram, he’s @Billshapiro.
