BEWARE- BE-WISE: The Truth and Lies About Honey

BEWARE- BE-WISE

The Truth and Lies About Honey

The Truth and Lies About Honey

Honey is a universal product. It is found in all cultures and used in perhaps uncountable ways. Solomon, king of Israel, advised that honey should be eaten but not too much of it (Prov.25:16, 27); Samson relished honey and even gambled a riddle on it; John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey for many years. Everybody seems to have something to say about honey: pure food, sweetener, ointment, emollient, medicine, aphrodisiac, preservative, sleep booster, brain booster, energy booster, immunity system booster, and much more.

How true are these claims? What really can one get out of eating honey? GB went to work and here is what we accumulated.

First, honey is a sugary food substance produced and stored by certain socialised (colony-oriented) insects, the most popular and best known being honey from honey bees. Even then, there are at least 40 types of honey, and each has a distinctive taste and unique properties, depending on the floral source of the nectar (the bees' food). Honey has the highest level of live enzyme among all foods and this comes from the activity of the bees.

Honey has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavour that leads some people to prefer it to refined sugar. Honey is about 82% sugar and so honey is usually classified as a sugar (sucrose) which is really a disaccharide (two molecules of sugar – fructose and glucose. It has a much higher percentage of fructose (fruit sugar) than glucose (blood sugar) and this is why it is the ideal sweetener for diabetics and all those trying to avoid the ills of refined sugar.

Nutritive Value of Honey

Nutritionally honey has little virtue. Its popularity is more on its medicinal and health benefits. Though it provides 64 calories in one tablespoonful (15 ml), it has no significant nutritional value. This is corroborated by the finding of late Prof. Roger J. Williams, an authority on nutrition and the 1931 discoverer of pantothenic acid (Vitamin B5).

In his analysis, honey showed nothing consequential in the supply of amino acids, vitamins, and major and trace minerals. The standard analysis shows that 100-gm honey contains carbohydrates (82.4 g) – of which sugars (82.12 g) are fructose (about 38%), glucose (about 32%), with other sugars and dietary fibre making up the rest. Others are fat (0 g), protein (0.3 g), and minute quantities of vitamins, particularly riboflavin (B2) 3%, niacin (B3) 1%, pantothenic acid (B5) 1%, pyridoxine (B6) 2%, folate (B9) 1%, Vitamin C 1%, and several minerals – of which calcium 1%, iron 3%, magnesium 1%, phosphorus 1%, potassium 1%, sodium 0% and zinc 2%. The rest is water (17.10 g or 17%).

Relative to the daily recommended quantities of these vitamins and minerals for adults, these percentages from honey are insignificant. The specific composition (sugar, vitamins, minerals, etc), colour, aroma, and flavour of any batch of honey depend on the flowers foraged by the bees that produced the honey (that is, the source of their feed).

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