A team of researchers from the University of Toronto discovered that honey may be excellent for cardiometabolic health by regulating cholesterol levels and maintain blood sugar.
While most of the time adding honey to foods means adding flavor, research has shown that it can also benefit health. The team also found that raw honey from a single floral source has the greatest impact.
The study authors reviewed a large number of clinical trials on honey and conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. They concluded that consumption of honey led to lowering of fasting blood glucose and also lowers LDL often called “bad cholesterolfor being a marker of fatty liver disease.
Not only was honey found to lower LDL, but it was also found to increase levels of “good cholesterol, HDL.”
“These results are surprising because honey is about 80 percent sugar,” said Tauseef Khan, a research associate in nutritional sciences at the U of T Temerty School of Medicine, in a university statement.
“But honey is also a complex composition of common and rare sugars, proteins, organic acids, and other bioactive compounds that most likely have health benefits,” he explained.
The latest project from the U of T team is the most complete and detailed review when it comes to the benefits and miracles of honey. He has not only focused on the simple pros and cons, but has also studied the processing and the floral source.
John Sievenpiper, an associate professor of nutritional sciences and medicine at the U of T, and also a clinical scientist at Unity Health Toronto, said most nutrition and public health experts believe that “a sugar is a sugar.”
“These results show that this is not the case, and should stop the designation of honey as free or added sugar in dietary guidelines,” he said.
The team, which published in the magazine nutrition reviews, of the experts emphasized the context of their findings, saying the benefits were seen in people who followed healthy dietary routines. Khan said the team didn’t think adding honey to the diet would suddenly make them healthy.
“The bottom line is more about a replacement: If you use table sugar, syrup, or another sweetener, swapping those sugars for honey could reduce cardiometabolic risks,” Khan explained.
The authors studied 18 controlled trials that had their sample size of more than 1100 participants. They made sure to grade each trial to see which ones had low-certainty evidence. However, the results showed that honey was beneficial or had neutral effects, depending on the quantity, processing, and floral source.
Around two tablespoons of honey (or 40 grams) was the average daily dose in all trials. They found that honey from monofloral sources has the greatest impact on health.
