Due to the Malthusian trap, the population of ancient East Asia always grew rapidly to the limit of food supply, and most people were always hungry or semi-starved, with insufficient calorie supply. Honey is actually sugar, and for the ancient people who were constantly hungry and malnourished, sugar itself was a miracle cure that could bring back the dead and was healthier than anything else. For the current victims in Syria and Iraq, sugar is also very healthy. The modern Chinese are just overfed.
Honey is composed of about half fructose, half glucose, almost the same as fructose glucose syrup, which is the main sweetener in sweetened drinks. So as healthy as Coke and Sprite are, so is honey. The glycemic index of honey is lower than that of pure glucose water and similar to that of fructose glucose syrup in sweetened beverages. But the glycemic index is not everything. It’s a play on words because honey is high in fructose and the glycemic index only counts glucose, not fructose. Is fructose indeed healthier than glucose? Actually, fructose is more unhealthy. Fructose is more easily metabolized into fat, and fructose is more likely to induce insulin resistance. Why is honey laxative? Both ancient China and Europe coincidentally classified fructose-rich fruits and honey as “cooling” and believed to cause diarrhea. This is because the intestinal tract has a limited rate of absorption of fructose, and consuming a large amount of fructose at one time will allow the fructose to accumulate in the intestinal tract before it can be absorbed, raising the osmotic pressure and grabbing water from the intestinal epithelium, causing more water to remain in the stool. This is called “osmotic diarrhea”. However, because fructose itself causes insulin resistance and is high in calories, it is not recommended to use fructose for laxative purposes, and fiber is more effective and has fewer side effects.
Ingredients of Honey – Sugar is the most important ingredient in honey, with other trace ingredients in smaller amounts. I won’t look up the data, but just to approximate the composition of honey, the vast majority of the components (about 90%) are sugars, mainly two monosaccharides, fructose and glucose, and many other sugars, but very few of the other varieties. It also contains some enzymes, polyphenols, minerals and other trace components, and some impurities and what not. Some honey produced in a polluted environment may also contain pesticides and other harmful substances.
The nutritional value of honey – it has some nutritional value, but it is not at all “healthy”, it is just an ordinary food. The main ingredient in honey is sugar, and it’s not much of a controversy that too much sugar is bad, so I won’t go into that. I’ll write down all the questions I’ve seen about honey here: Some people say: sugar is nutrition, how can you say honey is not nutritious? This is a matter of basic understanding of nutrition – that is, containing nutrients ≠ “having nutrients”. There is nothing wrong with sugar, what is wrong is that most modern people do not lack pure sugar like honey, we call it “pure energy”, for most modern people, pure energy it is “not nutritious”.
Unless you are hypoglycemic, then honey can even save your life at such times. Some people say that honey contains many kinds of sugars, one of which is called arabinose, which is good for reducing the absorption of sucrose and also promoting the growth of intestinal probiotics. Does the presence of beneficial sugars such as arabinose in honey = honey is good for your health? Not really. Arabinose is something like a dietary fiber or sweetener, it is half as sweet as sucrose and contains almost no calories, and like all dietary fibers, it blocks the absorption of other sugars in the body and becomes food for probiotics in the intestines, so it can be said to be beneficial for intestinal health. While it is true that arabinose is good, it is not a rare effect and is still only in the range of common foods, not to mention that the amount of arabinose in honey is very, very small.
You can’t just go to honey and get 99% absorbable sugar and 1% arabinose just because you heard that arabinose reduces the absorption of other sugars? I really don’t understand the logic of these people Some people say again, what about the fact that there are some enzymes, polyphenols and many other bioactive substances in honey that are good for the body? Does the trace amount of bioactive substances in honey mean that honey has health benefits? The answer is the same as the one above. The amount of these substances found in honey is very small. Don’t look at the name polyphenols and it sounds very nourishing, but in fact these substances are very common in natural foods, and they are available in many fruits and vegetables. They have no magical properties and are not unique to honey. If you want to get these beneficial substances, I suggest you might as well eat more fruits and vegetables.
There are a few more critical facts I would like to tell you.
1. the shelves of commercial honey, all the impurities and autoclaving, so the above-mentioned what enzymes ah polyphenols ah and so on bioactive substances, you do not think, must be inactivated.
2. The honey industry, serious counterfeiting, whether it is the shelves of packaged honey or the so-called home-grown natural wild honey, may be fake, and it is difficult to distinguish, many of them are sold to you directly with syrup as honey, not to mention the various nutrients.
If you’re lucky enough to really buy pure, natural and unadulterated honey, then you’re actually buying a product that is not regulated for food safety and may contain pesticides, microorganisms, harmful impurities and other problems. Some people say, but I do drink honey when I cough and I don’t feel like coughing anymore, isn’t that the effect of honey? It is true that honey can relieve the symptoms of an uncomfortable throat when coughing, but this is a relief of the surface symptoms, not a treatment of the pathology. See what I mean? All gooey syrups can relieve cough discomfort. If you feel comfortable, you drink it. If it’s not particularly uncomfortable, I don’t want to drink that much sugar anyway, I’d rather hold it in myself. Another prevalent effect of honey is to cure constipation. Can honey really cure constipation? For some people, honey does relieve constipation. The principle is that honey is high in fructose and if you have a fructose intolerance and also drink it on an empty stomach, there is indeed a good chance that you will want to run to the toilet right away. This is the reason why all the honey laxatives on the internet require you to drink it when you wake up in the morning on an empty stomach to be effective. This is the same as coughing, treating the symptoms but not the root cause. If you are really constipated, what you should do is to eat more vegetables and fruits, if you drink honey to “cure” the constipation, you do not eat vegetables and fruits, that is the real loss is not worth it.
To sum up, honey really has no health benefits! Lastly, just because I’ve said all this doesn’t mean I don’t recognize honey as a great edible sugar, and it doesn’t mean I’m against anyone consuming it. Honey has an incomparable flavor to white sugar and excellent moisturizing properties when baked, and I personally eat honey on occasion.
