Honey....

[Leapers]

Is honey actually good for you in the sense that it is very sugary but the ingredients say it is just 100% honey, there is also no table of calories or anything else on the jar, is it fattening is really i guess the point i am trying to get at?

thanks

[poodicat]

Well its a form of sugar and probably quite high in calories but its a good type of sugar and also for any health remedies

[Mr Veritas]

Hello there,
This site:~
http://fddb.info/db/e...ey_average/index.html
tell you ALL you need to know about honey,including it's calories.

[Clanad]

Actually, if you ate a paper bag, you'd consume some calories... Having been a bee keeper for a long time, I've had the privelege to learn a great deal about, not only the bees, but their prduct.

Honey has about 64 calories per tablespoon (about 3/4 of an ounce), while refined sugar has about 46. However the fructose and sucrose in honey is much more "usable" in the body than refined sugar and the intensity of the sweetness in honey is such that most people would consume less than sugar.
Honey contains more nutrients than sugar (by far) and is much easier to digest. Bacteria cannot live in honey, either. As well, honey contains no fats nor sodium...

[grasscarp]

Honey has a great number of benefits
http://www.whfoods.co...ame=foodspice&dbid=96

[beso]

I would have expected more accurate information from someone in the industry.

"...the fructose and sucrose in honey..."

Wrong. Honey is mainly fructose and glucose. The sucrose content is typically less then two percent. Fructose content is typically close to forty percent with glucose around thirty percent.

" honey is much more "usable" in the body than refined sugar ."
"...[honey] is much easier to digest."

Sucrose very quickly and easily digests in the stomach into glucose and fructose in equal amounts. (It should come as no surprise that these sugars are the main components of honey since it is produced in the digestive tracts of bees and then regurgitated.)

The rapid digestion of simple sugars is why blood sugar levels rise quickly. Like every other food) honey does have a lower glycemic index than sugar (the benchmarked maximum) because it also contains some higher carbohydrates. However it should not be considered a low glycemic index food as some varieties are in the very high range.

"Honey contains more nutrients than sugar (by far)."

Honey contains traces of minerals and vitamins and due to the comparison with the high sugar levels these amounts do constitute a significant source of these nutrients. Yes even this small amount is "far higher" than refined sugar which has none.

[beso]

Don't get excited about the high fructose content in honey. For many years fructose was promoted as a healthy alternative to cane sugar. However high fructose consumption has now been linked to liver disease, obesity, diabetes, gout and heart disease. Fructose is much slower to metabolise than glucose. It can only be processed by the liver.

Many processed foods contain high levels of fructose derived from corn syrup. It is cheap and very sweet. The shift to this sweetner in industrialsed food preparation is considered by many nutritionists as underlying the obesity epidemic.

[beso]

Typographic correction:

Honey contains traces of minerals and vitamins and due to the comparison with the high sugar levels these amounts do NOT constitute a significant source of these nutrients.

[bishopman]

I attended a meeting with Prince Charles once and he put honey in his tea!!