Hemp Seed Oil vs. CBD Oil: What’s the Difference?

by connie gregson, founding head of r+d at hello products Published: November 5, 2019

about the author show less

about the author

Connie is our founding director of R+D, which not only means she created the formulations for our products, but that she has more degrees than a thermometer. One of her degrees is an MS in food biochemistry, and she was a research scientist in Pepsi’s Product Innovation Group before deciding to focus cavity prevention and optimized oral health. When she’s not climbing, hiking, ultra-marathoning, playing guitar, or making awesome brownies with chickpea flour, she’s whipping up the most naturally friendly oral care products around.

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Photo: hemp toothpaste and floss, and black toothbrush

Cannabis-derived ingredients are really having a moment right now. But along with all of the recent excitement, there’s also a decent amount of confusion about these ingredients – it can be understandably difficult to keep a handle on the lingo used to describe and differentiate between CBD oil, hemp oil, hemp seed oil and their brethren.

So, we’re here to give you the skinny on the difference between these ingredients also provide you with a primer on the important bits of vocab used to describe these ingredients.

Hemp Seed Oil, Hemp Oil, CBD – What’s the Diff?

While both hemp seed oil and hemp oil can be derived from the cannabis plant, they differ in which part of the plant they come from. Let’s start with hemp seed oil: As the name would suggest, hemp seed oil is produced using the seeds of the cannabis plant. Hemp seeds contain protein, are commonly found in health food stores, and don’t contain any significant amounts of cannabinoids like CBD or THC. When they’re put under serious pressure, these lil’ seeds yield up their oil which is then used in a variety of applications including cooking, skincare, and, yep, oral health products. At hello, our hemp seed oil line of products will do their best to make sure your mouth stays properly moist – because a moisturized mouth is a happy mouth!

On the flip side, the term “hemp oil” generally refers to an ingredient derived from the flowers, stems and leaves of a cannabis plant that contains less than 0.3% THC. And this is where it gets a little bit tricky – because there’s a lot of different terminology out there used to describe hemp oil.

4 Different Hemp Terms Compared

If you’re doing some pajamaed online browsing or -gasp- strolling through an actual real-life store of some sort, you may very well stumble upon products sporting a number of different hemp oil-related names. This high level of nuance and variation can be overwhelming. But despair not, fair reader: here’s a handy-dandy list of some of the most common terminology you’re likely to encounter, and what each term means.

Hemp Oil: Hemp oil is created using the flowers, leaves, and stems of a cannabis plant that contains less than 0.3% THC and generally contains CBD and other naturally occurring cannabanoids.

CBD Isolate: CBD isolate usually refers to a hemp-derived material that has been processed to remove everything but CBD. CBD isolate is frequently described as “pure” CBD.

Broad Spectrum Hemp Oil: A term generally used to refer to hemp oil that contains the plant’s naturally occurring compounds (terpenes, essential oils, CBD and other cannabinoids), but has been processed to remove THC.

Full Spectrum Hemp Oil: Hemp oil labeled “full spectrum” generally contain all naturally occurring compounds found including THC.

Feeling a little more confident with all of this hemp stuff? We certainly hope so. And of course, if you have any questions specific to the stuff we put in our products, check out our ingredients page or reach out to us here.