Posted on 11/20/2022 8:34:30 PM PST by ConservativeMind
Researchers have found that honey improves key measures of cardiometabolic health, including blood sugar and cholesterol levels—especially if the honey is raw and from a single floral source.
The researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials on honey, and found that it lowered fasting blood glucose, total and LDL or "bad" cholesterol, triglycerides; it also increased HDL or "good" cholesterol.
"These results are surprising, because honey is about 80 percent sugar," said Tauseef Khan. "But honey is also a complex composition of common and rare sugars, proteins, organic acids and other bioactive compounds."
Previous research has shown that honey can improve cardiometabolic health, especially in in vitro and animal studies.
"The word among public health and nutrition experts has long been that 'a sugar is a sugar,'" said John Sievenpiper. "These results show that's not the case, and should give pause to the designation of honey as a free or added sugar in dietary guidelines."
Sievenpiper and Khan emphasized that the context of the findings was critical: clinical trials in which participants followed healthy dietary patterns, with added sugars accounting for 10 percent or less of daily caloric intake.
The median daily dose of honey in the trials was 40 grams, or about two tablespoons. The median length of trial was eight weeks. Raw honey drove many of the beneficial effects in the studies, as did honey from monofloral sources such as Robinia (also marketed as acacia honey)—a honey from False Acacia or Black Locust Trees—and clover, which is common in North America.
Khan said that while processed honey clearly loses many of its health effects after pasteurization—typically 65 degrees Celsius for at least 10 minutes—the effect of a hot drink on raw honey depends on several factors, and likely would not destroy all its beneficial properties.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
I didn’t realize it was edible and expensive. I recently saw it at breakfast buffets at LHR airport and Dublin Ireland.
If you can find a local beekeeper you can generally depend on that honey being truly raw. There is no real upside for the small producer to selling it any other way. And if you ask a keeper if the bees only visit one species of flower, they will just laugh at you. The exception might be hives placed in almond groves, a temporary food source. But bees don’t like a monoculture.
If you can find a local beekeeper you can generally depend on that honey being truly raw. There is no real upside for the small producer to selling it any other way. And if you ask a keeper if the bees only visit one species of flower, they will just laugh at you. The exception might be hives placed in almond groves, a temporary food source. But bees don’t like a monoculture.
I sure misworded that post.
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