mintedLeaf Review

Written by Cathy Rozyczko — Edited by Jason Brett on February 9, 2021

“The entourage effect is our guiding principle.” So says mintedLeaf, a purveyor of cannabidiol goodness made right here in the USA. The brand aims to provide consumers with effective alternatives to the common stuff in the medicine cabinets. And for the most part, they’re succeeding…especially with their CBD pain relief cream that has a special, therapeutic ingredient for aches and pains you’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in the CBD space.

MintedLeaf prides themselves on three pillars that underpin their CBD oil business — educating consumers, developing products based on hard science, and strictly sourcing hemp grown in the USA. 

It’s not to say that all imported hemp is bad, but for the most part, sticking close to home is beneficial for a few reasons. Here’s why it’s a good thing to get CBD products from US hemp:

• Regulations on industrial hemp farmers in the US are strict.
• US farmers are likely to use sustainable/organic methods to appeal to consumers.
• The carbon footprint is lower.
• Vendors can more easily trace products and check in on their suppliers.

MintedLeaf is also big on the entourage effect, citing it as their ‘guiding principle’. We can verify that indeed, their full spectrum CBD oil tinctures are brimming with a variety of cannabinoids in addition to CBD, like CBDa, CBC, CBG, and more.

Extraction method

The brand prides themselves on using the ethanol extraction method to procure their CBD oil, stating that this process preserves more of the beneficial terpenes, cannabinoids, and flavonoids than CO2 extraction. 

The thing is, companies are constantly arguing about what extraction method is best, and for the most part, we stay out of the battle (except when it comes to harmful solvents like propane). Since ethanol is a clean, environmentally friendly method, we’re happy to award mintedLeaf the Quality Badge.

mintedLeaf products

MintedLeaf currently offers a healthy variety of cannabidiol products that are reasonably priced and made from non-GMO ingredients, including:

• • CBD oil tinctures– These are available in multiple concentrations ranging from 250mg to 1500mg and contain full spectrum cannabidiol, MCT oil, and peppermint essential oil.

• CBD softgels

• • CBD topicals– MintedLeaf offers five CBD topicals, but there’s a problem — they don’t list the ingredients for any of them! Of all categories, this is definitely the one we need to check, since most CBD topicals contain synthetics of some kind. We’re justifiably disappointed in the brand for not disclosing these important details, especially since they claim on their homepage to be 100% natural.
• CBD gummies

Our disappointment in the lack of disclosure aside, there is an innovative product in mintedLeaf’s CBD topical assortment. Their odorless pain relief cream combines cannabidiol with histamine dihydrochloride, a salt of histamine with analgesic (numbing properties). It’s typically considered highly beneficial — like CBD — to support with minor aches and pains, arthritis, bumps, and bruises. 

Since we’ve only seen this powerful therapeutic ingredient one other time in the CBD space, we’re awarding mintedLeaf the Innovation Badge for their forward thinking.

Call-outs

According to our methodology, mintedLeaf falls short in just two areas: safety and charity. As far as testing is concerned, the brand is pretty close to the Safety Badge. MintedLeaf does a good job with contaminants testing with results for pesticides, heavy metals, and mycotoxins. However, we’ll also need to see an updated residual solvents test to grant them the badge.

Finally, the Charity Badge is amiss, since it seems the brand is not involved in any charitable activities. We hope they get into the spirit of giving back in the future.

Bottom Line

MintedLeaf offers awesome full spectrum tinctures made right here in the USA from domestically grown hemp. However, we’d like for them to disclose the ingredients in their CBD topicals to let consumers know exactly what they’re getting with each purchase.