Top Health Benefits of Honey

A completely natural sweetener, it dates back more than hundreds of years, yet the health benefits of honey are still not widely known even today. Healthier and more pure than artificial sweeteners or sugar, honey provides more than a taste for the sweet tooth; honey benefits your health and your body inside and out.
History of Honey
Records can not definitively state how long honey has existed. Some believe honey dates back farther than 20 millions years, but honey bee fossils cause reason to believe that date could extend to over 150 millions years. Cave paintings in Spain suggest that beekeeping began approximately around 7000 B.C. and Egyptian records from 2400 B.C. provide evidence of their culture keeping bees in hives.
The Egyptians used honey in more ways than one. As well as its common use as a sweetener, Egyptians gave honey as a gift to their gods and used it as a component of their embalming fluid. The Romans also gave honey to their gods and were known to cover physical wounds in honey to cure and promote natural healing. The Romans and Greeks both utilized honey as a form of cooking but around the turn of the seventeenth century, honey became primarily used as a sweetener.
Honey Production
So, how do bees produce honey? The process begins at the flower as the bee gathers the flower's nectar. The majority of nectar is water and a minority is complex sugars. Bees need to store and make the sugar usable, so the bees alter the nectar changing it into honey. To complete this task, a worker bee that has a full stomach of nectar flies to the hive to regurgitate the modified nectar for a hive bee. Then, the hive bee ingests the nectar to break down the sugars. Once the hive bee has completed that task, he regurgitates the nectar into a cell of the comb. The hive bees are responsible for beating their wings in order to evaporate any remaining water; once complete, the sugar converts to honey. In a lifetime, a worker bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey, but when bees in a colony work together, more than 200 pounds of honey are produced within one year.

Honeybees' hard work provides us with a healthy and beneficial food. All in all, it consists of 80% natural sugars, 18% water, and 2% vitamins, minerals, and pollen. Keep in mind, honey does not expire because it does not harbor bacteria, so you can keep it on your shelf for as long as necessary!
Health Benefits of Honey
It is nature's energy booster due to its carbohydrates; these carbohydrates provide energy, as well as strength. Athletes, in particular, benefit from honey due to its ability to create endurance and decrease fatigue. The glucose found in honey plays a role, also, as the body rapidly absorbs it to give immediate energy. On the other hand, the fructose in honey is absorbed at a slower rate to give sustained energy. As opposed to refined sugar, honey keeps the body's sugar levels somewhat constant, instead of spiking the blood sugar which causes an energy crash.
It is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and contains antioxidants to help boost the body's immunity. Raw honey has approximately 5,000 enzymes and numerous vitamins, amino acids, and minerals. Honey helps fight respiratory problems and has increased the quality of life in cancer patients.
Unlike refined white sugar, it contains no empty calories. Use honey in place of white sugar to reduce blood sugar spikes and to fill those empty calories with vitamins and minerals. In addition, honey has been noted to suppress appetite. One teaspoon of honey contains approximately 21 calories and is sweeter than sugar, which means you are able to use less for the same sweetening effect potentially promoting weight loss.
When applied topically, the properties of honey have the ability to heal wounds including burns and ulcers. The two sugars found in honey, fructose and glucose, attract water so that when honey is applied to a wound, honey absorbs the water into the wound. This action dries out the wound to inhibit and deter bacterial growth.


Top Ten Ways to Cook and Eat Honey

1. Use in your hot tea as a healthy sweetener.
2. Mix into your plain yogurt instead of buying a less healthy, pre-sweetened yogurt.
3. Spread a slice of toast with peanut butter, honey, and cinnamon to jumpstart your morning routine.
4. Instead of sprinkling sugar over your cereal, drizzle it with honey.
5. Substitute it for sugar in cookie, bread, and muffin recipes.
6. Use it as a seasoning for meat. Apply honey to chicken or pork chops before cooking to give the meat a unique flavor.
7. Create a dressing with olive oil, vinegar, and honey to use on top of salads.
8. Drizzle it over vanilla ice cream for a decadent dessert.
9. Add honey and lemon with hot water as a refreshing, soothing drink.
10. Eat it straight from the comb! Take a bite out of the comb and chew it like chewing gum. The more you chew, the more honey will come out of the honey comb. When all of the honey is out of the comb, spit out or swallow the wax; the wax is safe to eat and is non-toxic.

Take Caution
Although it is a healthy addition to any diet, certain individuals should take precautions. For instance, children under the age of one should not ingest honey; it contains spores that can cause a life-threatening and paralyzing disease called infant botulism.
Persons with pollen allergies should take caution when eating it; although, serious reactions are rare. Most honey sold in stores is filtered and pasteurized, which lowers the amount of pollen in the honey. If one does have a pollen allergy, eating it straight from the comb should be avoided, as it is in its natural form.
How to Choose Honey
To reap the full benefits, choose raw honey. The raw version has not been filtered or pasteurized, which means that it has not been striped of its powerful vitamins and minerals. To choose the highest quality and gain the full health benefits of honey, look for one that states, "100% Raw" and enjoy your path to nutritional sweetness!

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The Worst Foods That Make You Gain Weight

In your quest for responsible weight loss, knowing what to eat and what not to eat are essential. Aside from physical activity, diet is the second most important thing. In the previous post, I discussed the top foods for weight loss. I also promised that I would let you know the worst foods that make you gain weight.

The list of food below are terrible for two reasons, they have very little or no nutritional value and they are high calorie. Without further delay, here are the worst foods that make you gain weight with an explanation of why they are not good.

Worst Food #1- Avoid any processed foods. There are chemical and preservatives, which the body considers foreign. In many cases, the preservatives are not broken down in your digestive system and actually throws it out of whack.

Worst Food #2 - Refined sugar. This is not to say that you can't have a slice of pie or candy. But be aware that for the same amount of calories, you could eat a much larger quantity of "non- junk food" that actually gives your body more than just a short sugar rush.

Worst Food #3 - Stay away from foods with high sodium content. It doesn't matter if its pizza, pudding, or a steak dinner. Be watchful of any food with a lot of sodium because not only does it swell up the size of the fat cells and it makes you retain water. Not to mention, a high sodium diet also increases your chances of developing high blood pressure.

Worst Food #4 - These next few are certainly no surprise to most of you. High fructose corn syrup, trans-fat and hydrogenated oils. You also want to avoid saturated fats as well. The high fructose corn syrup, trans- fat and hydrogenated oils throw your metabolic system into chaos and can cause you to actually feel hungrier, making you eat more. Saturated fats clogs up your arteries and are total waist busters.

Worst Food #5 - Avoid full fat foods and drinks such as bacon and whole milk. They are loaded with saturated fat and needless calories. Find substitutes for these traditionally high fat foods like turkey bacon, low-fat cheeses or low-fat milk.

Worst Food #6 - Limit your intake of salad dressing and sauces. They are full of useless calories, not to mention that they are loaded with salt and sugars. If you have to have condiments, make sure they are served on the side and not plopped on your food.

Worst Food#7 - Stay away from white flour products because they are refined carbohydrates. They are just another form of sugar. So when you eat them, they will only serve to skyrocket your insulin levels, which leaves you craving for more sugar when you crash. Avoid this endless cycle like the plague.

Worst Food #8 - Anything fried is simply not good. There's tons of fat and breading. A potato, chicken or a zucchini can be just as bad as a red velvet cake if you throw it in the fryer. Enough said on that one.

Worst Food #9 - Alcohol and soft drinks. Aside from giving you a quick flavor thrill and maybe a buzz, it is best to limit these as well. Beer especially is full of calories, fat and carbs and soft drinks are high sugar and high on calories. A special note be careful with diet sodas and fruit juices. In regards to diet sodas, the artificial sweeteners have been known to spike hunger cravings. Fruit juices for the most part tend to be high in sugar and carbs. If you have time, get a juicer and make your own juice or just eat the piece of fruit.

Well, there you have it, the worst foods that make you gain weight. Perhaps, all of these you may have know these. But if you are actually serious about losing weight, it is important that you take this knowledge and apply it to your daily life.

Be healthy and have a fantastic day.





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How to Choose Good Quality Honey

What is considered as good quality honey?
Even after deciding that a certain floral variety of honey would be your most favourite type of honey, many of us are often still left with the question of "How do I choose the same floral variety of honey amongst all the countless brands of honey from all over the world, with a big range of prices in the market place?"
When I am navigating through the maze of all the different honey in the shops, I look out for certain specific information to ensure that the honey I buy is value for money. Good quality honey, that is, honey of value can be judged by five key factors, namely:
1. Water content
Good quality honey essentially has low water content. Honey is likely to ferment if the water content of honey is greater than 19%. The reason is that all unpasteurized honey contains wild yeasts. Due to the high sugar concentration, these yeasts will pose little risk in low moisture honey because osmosis will draw sufficient water from the yeast to force them into dormancy. In honey that has a higher proportion of water, the yeast may survive and cause fermentation to begin in storage.
Honey is very hygroscopic, which means that it easily absorbs moisture from the air. Thus, in areas with a very high humidity it can be difficult to produce good quality honey of sufficiently low water content, which can be measured using a gadget called refractometer. Raw honey's moisture content can be as low as 14%, and is usually deemed as more valuable and hence is relatively more costly. Honey containing up to 20% water is not recommended for mead-making. One simple way of judging the relative quantity of water in honey involves taking two same-size, same-temperature, well-sealed jars of honey from different sources. Turn the two jars upside-down and watch the bubbles rise. Bubbles in the honey with more water content will rise faster.

2. HMF(Hydroxymethylfurfural)
HMF is a break-down product of fructose (one of the main sugars in honey) formed slowly during storage and very quickly when honey is heated. The amount of HMF present in honey is therefore used as a guide to storage guide to storage length and the amount of heating which has taken place. HMF's occurrence and accumulation in honey is variable depending on honey type. High levels of HMF may indicate excessive heating during the extraction process. Honey that is traded in a bulk form is usually required to be below 10 or 15mg/kg to enable further processing and then give some shelf life before a level of 40 mg/kg is reached. It is not uncommon for honey sold in hot climates to be well over 100 mg/kg in HMF. This is mostly due to the ambient temperatures (over 35°C) that honey is exposed to in the distribution channel. Some countries set an HMF limit for imported honey. You may also want to note the colour of the honey as it can sometimes be an indicator of quality because honey becomes darker during storage and heating.
3. Inverted sugars
High levels of HMF (greater than 100 mg/kg) can also be an indicator of adulteration with inverted sugars . Cane sugar (sucrose) is "inverted" by heating with a food acid, and this process creates HMF. Many food items sweetened with high fructose corn syrups, e.g. carbonated soft drinks, can have levels of HMF up to 1,000 mg/kg
4. Impurities
For most consumers, good quality honey is expected to be visually free of defect -- clean and clear. Honey which has a very high pollen content appears cloudy, and the presence of many other contaminations such as particles of wax, bees, splinters of wood, and dust certainly does make it look unappetising and unappealing for anyone to buy and consume, and hence it appears as if it's of very low value. Unfortunately, no matter how much food value or health benefits some of these particles like pollen can offer, this kind of honey is hard to be associated with good quality honey and is immediately rejected by most consumers at the super-mart. And this explains why it's almost impossible to find unfiltered, raw honey on the shelf. Its cloudy appearance makes them commercially unattractive.

5. Colour
Honey is color graded into light, amber, and dark categories which do not really have any bearing on quality. Some of the most distinctively and strongly flavored honey varieties, such as basswood, are very light, while very mild and pleasant honeys such as tulip poplar can be quite dark. Honey color is measured on the Pfund Scale in millimeters. While it is not an indicator of honey quality and there are exceptions to the rule, generally speaking, the darker color the honey, the higher its mineral contents, the pH readings, and the aroma/flavor levels. Minerals such as potassium, chlorine, sulfur, iron, manganese, magnesium, and sodium have been found to be much higher in darker honeys.

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