Honey: Nature's Nectar or Another Sugar Substitute?

Getting to the truth of the value of a food requires that we compare the claims on it.  How many times have you read that this food or herb heals or cures a certain ailment?  Perhaps some foods can help in alleviating symptoms.  And if some foods can heal or or cure an ailment, the real question is can it do it for me?  And can it do it more than once?  And perhaps the final question might be "What are its healing properties?" To answer these questions we really need to read comparative claims, which might only leave us with information that makes us less confident when using the food for performance.  

Case in point: honey.  I don't know how many times I have read that honey is a super food, that honey has healing properties, that it is so much better than sugar or artificial sweeteners.  Okay, on that last claim I tend to adhere to that view, but honey as a super food?  Prove it.

I mean I have heard claims of its super power to treat every ailment from arthritis to heart murmurs to brain cognitive deficits.  Here's one article titled "7 Health Benefits of Honey That Could Heal Your Whole Body." That's quite a claim.  So let's take a look at what Lizette Borreli claims honey can do.

#1: Alleviates Allergies

#2: All Natural Energy Drink

#3: Boosts Memory

#4: Cough Suppressant

#5: Sleep Aid

#6: Treats Dandruff

#7: Treats Wounds & Burns

Hmm.  I have my doubts.  But let's review the statements.  First, the allergies.  Apparently, honey produces an immune response that produces antibodies that one's body can use to fight against allergies. Okay.

Second, All Natural Energy Drink.  

Five, as a sleep aid.  Here is what Lizette Borreli claims:

Honey can be a health aid for sleepless nights. Similar to sugar, honey can cause a rise in insulin and release serotonin — a neurotransmitter that improves mood and happiness. “The body converts serotonin into melatonin, a chemical compound that regulates the length and the quality of sleep,” Rene Ficek, registered dietitian and lead dietitian nutritionist at Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating in Chicago, Ill., told Medical Daily in an email.

Moreover, honey also contains several amino acids, including tryptophan that is commonly associated with turkey. Honey’s steady rise in insulin, according to Brennecke, causes the tryptophan in honey to enter the brain, where it’s then converted into serotonin and then into melatonin, which is a sleep aid. This hormone is responsible for regulating sleep and wake cycles.

Perhaps all of this is true in an unadulterated, 25 year old body.  But again what happens when you're using food to improve performance or restore function?  Do these claims still hold, say, in a 63 year old body?  Is honey still the miracle food in a 63 year old body?  That is the question isn't? The question being does this work for me too?  

Another article claims that honey is actually poison.  If so, the health and nutrition and the honey industry have combined to pull the proverbial wool over the eyes of many, including myself who look to honey not just as a natural sweetener but as some kind of mysterious super food produced by the pollenating bees in wonderful nature.

Without these acids and the drying, honey would readily ferment and prove unusable for the bee which must have a dependable food supply for up to eight months in some of the harsher climates. Because of these acids and dehydration, honey is impregnable to bacteria. It is rather poisonous in the human digestive tract.

As a food for us honey is woefully mineral and vitamin deficient. Humans require infinitely more food factors than bees.

While honey contains several very desirable sugars, these have been rendered toxic by the protective acids imparted to them by the bees. These acids are the bees’ preservatives. Humans do not have the enzymes to break these acids down, as have the bees, and must rob their bodies of vital base-forming minerals to neutralize the acids.

I recently ate 2 tablespoons of honey with cheese.  The results? Well, it definitely helps one to sleep, but I woke up feeling exhausted and yawning over and over.  I was also dehydrated. This effect concerned me since the night before I had a couple liters of water.

When humans eat honey, it immediately begins to reabsorb moisture from the stomach and stomach flora. It destroys our symbiotic bacterial population wholesale. Several tablespoons of honey makes most people very sick.

In humans honey, more so than cane and beet sugars, is acid-forming and decalcifying. The body draws calcium from its teeth and bones, if necessary, to neutralize the acids introduced and formed.

Manite acid of honey is a protoplasmic poison. It interacts with protein and from this, forms alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid.

As eaten, honey is an atrocious food. It is usually added to starches and proteins as a sweetener. It readily ferments when held up in the stomach with other longer-digesting foods. The byproducts alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid are deleterious to human health.

Honey is, therefore, neither a nutritious nor a safe food.  Life Scientists should not use honey as a part of their diet.

For me it is the dehydrating effects of the honey that cause me concern. And by dehydration I mean my organs were dry--my stomach, my muscles, my head.  It was awful.  No more honey for me. 

Mark Sisson testifies to honey's ability to relieve allergies:

But my personal opinion is that it can really work for seasonal, pollen allergies, because I’ve experienced it firsthand. On a family camping trip to Big Sur, I got a horrible case of hay fever. It was insanely windy all week, so all sorts of allergenic plant compounds were blowing around. It was like I had a tiny cloud of dust and pollen following me around, a la Pigpen from Peanuts. I’d never had it that bad – headache, stuffy nose, bleary red eyes – and it hit me about three hours after our arrival. I felt like I had the worst cold in the history of the world. I actually wanted to go home. On our second day, however, while on a hike, I came across an old guy selling raw, local wildflower honey by the side of the road. A handcrafted cardboard sign read “Good for hay fever.” I thought, “Why not?” and bought a pint. The guy was nice and enthusiastic about his product, and I always like to support small apiaries.

I took a big glug of it and continued on the hike. It was real good, not too sweet and with a raw floral quality to it. Again, I don’t eat a lot of honey, but this stuff was legit – even through my clogged nasal passages. We got back to camp, made dinner, and I went to bed soon after darkness fell. Nose was still stuffy, head was still congested, misery level was still elevated.

And then I woke up, and while things were still backed up, I could tell it was better. A thin jet of air even squeaked through my clogged right nostril, allowing me to breathe and (most importantly) taste the bacon that morning. Another glug of honey down the hatch. Overall, I’d say things were 25% better at this point. By late afternoon, I was 75% better. I kept taking hits of honey and by next morning, I was perfectly fine. Now, I suppose it’s possible that the honey acted as a placebo and my hay fever was already on its way out – I didn’t control for variables, there were no placebos involved, and I randomized absolutely nothing, so there’s no telling for sure. But I doubt it had no effect. Too many other people report similar experiences to make me dismiss my own experience as nonsense or coincidence.

I will say that if you’re going to use raw honey to fight pollen allergies, you’ll want to buy honey that comes from bees who deal with the same plants and flowers that produce the allergenic pollen in question. That means buying local, preferably wildflower honey. Unless you know for sure that your allergy is caused by a specific pollen from a specific plant, wildflower will give you the most bang for your buck by covering a large assortment of plants. So, while raw, unfiltered honey lovingly puked up by bees who subsist only on wild edelweiss growing in the Swiss Alps might taste amazing, it probably won’t do much for your allergies if you’re not allergic to edelweiss pollen.

So perhaps generalized claims about honey cannot be made; that, in fact, in order for the claims about honey to be true one must look at a particular variety or a particular brand of honey to work its magic.