By Jacob Schor, N.D.
“Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” Psalm xix. 10.
Worry over sweeteners has reached an all time high. Health conscious folk have always worried about eating sugar, but with the current fad with low carbohydrate diets, concern has turned to obsession for many.
Patients frequently interrogate me about sugar and sugar substitutes. My response is simple: “Honey is good for you, the rest probably aren't."
The fake or what we politely call artificial sweeteners either taste bad or bring unacceptable health risks. Aspartame, the best tasting of the lot, may cause brain cancer - a decidedly bitter thought.
Nor are the new "manufactured" sugars any better. High fructose corn syrup, made by converting corn starch into fructose and glucose has little appeal health wise. It tastes good, is cheap to make and has an undeserved reputation of being good for you. In truth, however, High Fructose Corn Syrups (HFCS) produce changes in the body that are clearly unhealthy. Consumption increases fats in the blood that cause elevated cholesterol, and it also causes insulin resistance of the sort that leads to diabetes.
Now that I've frightened you into avoiding the other sweeteners, let's take a closer look at honey. Honey is a perfect sweetener. It is by far the oldest sweetener in human experience.
Our ancestors have been "stealing" honey for nearly five million years. Back in ancient Egypt, about five thousand years ago, we figured out how to keep bees in hives and started moving them about to help pollinate fields to increase farm harvests and increase honey production.
The woven, cone-shaped straw hive is still a universally recognized symbol for bee hives despite the fact that they are no longer used, in fact, illegal to use. The modern box shaped bee hive was invented in the 1850s and revolutionized bee-keeping. The
"new" hives allow excess honey to be removed without killing the bees, a distinct disadvantage of the older ones.
Honey is the sweetest food found in nature. Flowering plants make a sugar syrup called nectar to attract insects. The insects, moving from plant to plant, feeding on and collecting the nectar transfer pollen and provide plants with the evolutionary benefit of sexual reproduction. It's a win-win situation - for the plants and the bees.
Honey bees collect this nectar and store it for later use as honey. The bees evaporate water from the nectar and add enzymes to catalyze the breakdown of the sucrose into glucose and fructose. It's the fructose that makes the honey so sweet. Honey, gram for gram or calorie for calorie, tastes much sweeter than any other sugar. No wonder every civilization has craved and almost worshipped its properties, considering it to be something of a magical elixir.
The chemical composition of honey is similar to that of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Yet it has drastically different effects inside the body. Eating honey improves a person's cholesterol blood lipid profiles while HFCS does the opposite.
Honey does a number of things we think of as protective against heart disease. All those people who eat a bowl of oatmeal in the morning to lower their cholesterol should be adding honey. Eating honey also lowers fasting blood sugar levels, lowering risk of diabetes or helping control the disease. It calms that part of the immune system that causes allergies while activating that part of the immune system that fights infection and kills germs.
Traditionally honey has been a prime ingredient in topical salves. Modern research shows that honey applied to the skin is an effective treatment for a number of diseases including herpes, tinea or fungal infections, psoriasis, and seborrhea. It is helpful in treating infected wounds and in preventing spread of cancer to surgical incisions.
So honey tastes good, and it's better for you than anything that tastes so good has a right to be. Now that's a win-win situation.
Jacob Schor, N.D. majored in Food Science and Product Development as an undergraduate at Cornell University, and received his doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine at National College in Portland, Oregon in 1991. He served as President of the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians from 1992-1999 and maintains a private practice at the Denver Naturopathic Clinic.