Honey is a Health Food?

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Honey is Healthy?
Did you know that honey is healthier than sugar? Honeyspoon

Science shows that people sleep better when they eat honey before bedtime.

Honey is a Health Food?

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Over the last few years, more and more evidence has emerged to show that honey has healthful properties and is superior to sugar as a sweetener. One of the first notable examples came from Dr Steven Pratt in his book Superfoods Healthstyle where he listed honey as a superfood contributing to a healthier lifestyle because of the antioxidants it contains.

Another one of the early books on this subject was written by English pharmacist, Mike McInnes, and nutritional expert, Stuart McInnes. Although The Hibernation Diet was not originally intended to be a diet book, the publishers advised the authors that although a health book wouldn't sell a diet book would, and as a result the book was rewritten to accommodate. The basic idea presented in this book is that honey is the perfect fuel for feeding your liver before you go to sleep. The fructose combined with glucose provides a ready fuel that is easily converted to glycogen. With a well fueled liver your body works hard repairing itself as you sleep. As a result you end up better rested and with much more energy when you wake. A lot of energy is burnt while you sleep, but you are also able to do more during the day. The current publisher freely admits that only about 40% of people actually lose weight on this plan, but everyone feels better. It starts with taking a tablespoon of honey before bed and incorporates some easy resistance exercises.

Honey dripping into pool

The mechanisms of how honey promotes health are starting to become clearer. The First International Symposium on Honey and Human Health was held in Sacramento, California in January 2008 and showcased a wide variety of research into honey and health. In addition, a couple of recently published books condense the various research that is available into manageable reading material.

The Honey Revolution by Dr Ron Fessenden and Mike McInnes is an in-depth collection of the research on honey listing all scientific references. The authors consolidate and condense this information to make sense of why honey improves health. This is a heavy tome and they have recently released an abridged version that leaves out much of the scientific detail while still retaining the conclusions.

Another significant book is Healing Honey by Dr. Lynne Chepulis. A nutrition scientist working on honey and health for over 15 years, Dr Chepulis has produced significant works contributing to the understanding of honey and its healthful benefits. In one refereed scientific paper she showed that rats fed a diet containing honey gained no more weight than those on a sugar-free diet, while rats fed a diet containing a comparable percentage of sucrose (table sugar) gained significant weight. The honey-fed rats had higher HDL-cholesterol (good cholesterol) and lower blood glucose levels compared with both sucrose-fed and sugar-free rats, and also had higher bone mineral density than sugar-free rats. Another study showed that rats fed honey had better spatial memory and lower anxiety levels than rats fed sucrose. Dr. Chepulis concluded that these effects were caused by factors other than the differences in sugar content and could be attributed to factors in the honey. In her book, Dr Chepulis uses her own research and that of others to discuss why sugar should be replaced with honey in our diet.

The overwhelming conclusion of all these books is that our diets contain too much table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. A recent report by CBC showed that one family of four ate 4.1 kg of sugar in a single week. These sources are not suggesting that you eat endless amounts of honey to get healthy. There are still significant calories in honey. However, replacing some of the sugar in your diet with honey can improve your health. As honey is sweeter than sugar, you can get by with less. It is also much less likely that you will eat too much honey as your body will not keep craving more, unlike with sucrose and high fructose corn syrup.

For more information on the health benefits of honey please refer to the following sources: