- A new study finds that honey, unlike other sweeteners, may actually be good for cardiometabolic health.
- The benefits of honey were revealed in studies of people who ate a heavy diet containing 10% or less sugar.
- The study suggests that honey, particularly raw monofloral honey, may be a healthier replacement for sugar already consumed, rather than an additional sweetener added to daily intake.
Consider replacing the sugar you consume with honey, says a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto.
For people with a healthy diet in which no more than 10% of the daily intake calories come from sugar, honey actually provides cardiometabolic benefits.
The study is a review and meta-analysis of the effects of honey in 18 controlled feeding trials involving 1,105 predominantly healthy individuals.
Taken together, the trials showed that honey reduced fasting blood sugar (blood sugar levels on an empty stomach), total, and “bad” (LDL) cholesterol, as well as a marker of fatty liver disease. They also found that honey increased markers of inflammation.
While sugars of all kinds are associated with cardiometabolic problems, and honey is 80% sugar, the study authors suggest that honey may be in a category of its own and deserves special consideration as a health food.
The researchers found that raw honey and monofloral honey provided the greatest cardiometabolic benefit.
The study appears in nutrition reviews.
Unlike most sweeteners, honey’s sweetening power doesn’t come exclusively from common sugars, like fructose and glucose.
Study co-author Dr Tauseef Ahmad Khanresearch associate at Temerty School of Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada, said today’s medical news:
“About 15% of honey is made of dozens of rare sugars, eg isomaltulose, kojibiose, trehalose, melecitose, etc., which have been shown to have many physiological and metabolic benefits, including glucose response enhancement, reducing and promoting insulin resistance. [the] growth of bacteria associated with a healthy gut.
Plus, Dr. Khan said, honey contains much more than just sugars.
This includes, he said, “many bioactive molecules, including polyphenols, flavonoidsand organic acids that have a variety of pharmacological properties including antibiotic effect, anticancer effect, antiobesogenic [anti-obesity] effect, protection against free radical damage and reduce inflammation, etc.”
endocrinologist Dr. Ana Maria Kauselwho was not involved in the study, said MNT that, however, I would prefer the focus to remain on reducing sugar intake.
“I think the focus should be more on having less sugar overall in the diet. The benefits were seen after consuming an average of 40 grams for 8 weeks. This amount of sugar is more than the body can process without involving the liver. We can see similar benefits in [cardiovascular] and metabolic risks without sugar intake, for example, the Mediterranean diet”, he pointed.
Honey products are often pasteurized, raw honey is not.
Honey is pasteurized for convenience, not safety, as processing slows down the natural granulation of honey, which can make it more difficult to pour from a squeeze bottle or measure into a spoon.
Raw honey has a variety of nutrientsincluding many antioxidantswhich can decrease in quantity with pasteurization.
The current study found that raw honey had a particularly positive effect on fasting glucose.
Most honey is polyfloral, meaning that the bees that produce it collect nectar from any nectar-producing plant within a 2-4 mile range of their hive.
A monofloral honey is one that is derived exclusively from nectar collected by bees from a single type of plant, or even from a single plant.
Known monofloral honeys include Tupelo honey, from White Ogeechee Tupelo trees, Clover honey, Robinia honey, and French Lavender honey. Each has a distinctive flavor.
The researchers found that single flower clover and locust honeys reduced LDL cholesterol and overall cholesterol, as well as fasting triglycerides. Clover honey also lowered fasting glucose levels.
Excessive inflammation is increasingly associated with a variety of diseases and conditions, so the study finding that honey raised markers of inflammation IL-6 Y TNF-alpha may give rise to some concern.
However, Dr. Khan suggested that an increase in these markers might actually indicate additional benefits.
“IL-6 may play a role in maintaining good glucose control by improving glucose and lipid metabolism throughout the body,” he said. “Similarly, TNF-alpha is an indicator of the body’s innate immune response, so an increase with honey intake may suggest better immunity.”
“I’m interested,” Dr. Khan said, “in all natural sweeteners and I plan to look at maple syrup and of course agave syrup. However, there is a big difference between these syrups and honey.”
“Syrups like maple syrup and agave are obtained directly from plants, with some processing by humans using heat, and are composed primarily of common sugars such as fructose, glucose, and sucrose,” he added.
As Dr. Kausel said, “Agave is natural, but at the end of the day it’s fructose.“
“High concentrations of fructose,” he noted, “are bad for the liver, no matter what the source. Even natural juices are harmful to the liver, despite all the vitamins and minerals they may contain.
Still, the way bees make honey adds an interesting twist that makes their sugars different.
“Honey,” Dr. Khan explained, “has an additional step whereby the bees extensively process the nectar [which is mainly sucrose] of the flowers with their enzymes, resulting in a wide variety of rare sugars that are produced in honey. These rare sugars are the key to the benefits of honey sugars over other natural sugars.”
