Is Too Much Honey Bad For You
The desire for sweets is a biological urge of ours. Humans DNA is programmed to consume the sweet taste as identified with energy and as a source of energy sweet interprets in our brains as the ability to move and survive. And as this trait of ours is a given, honey became a world-leading sweetener in almost every house these days.
We need the flavor sweet, preferably from a natural origin such as honey but a lot of times I have been asked to which extent really. The urge to maintain sensitivity to sugar has been conducted throughout the history of evolution and is an instinct of ours. So, it is expressed in the ability to detect glucose, fructose, and sucrose as originally being manufactured by plants.
But can too much honey be bad for you? The answer is yes. Too much honey IS bad for you. At the end of the day, honey is sugar a.k.a carbohydrates. Of course, it is much much better than white, brown and any industrial sugars but should be consumed with thought and balance as too much sugar is never a good thing.
So begs the question, how much is too much honey? And what is honey anyhow? Can one overdose on it? How do we balance our sugar levels despite consumption and can we eat more honey and other sugars if we exercise on a regular basis? So many questions to answer but let’s start with the basics.
What is honey
Honey is a mixture of wonderful ingredients and basically plain natural sugar. It has in it some trisaccharides, carbohydrates, sucrose, minerals, vitamins, and enzymes (such as several vitamins from our beloved B vitamins group, vitamin C and the minerals calcium, iron, zinc, potassium, phosphorous, magnesium, selenium, chromium, and manganese).
But above all, honey is just a yummy natural sweetener that can be applied on fruits, put in shakes, cakes, cookies are any kind of sweetened food and in tea.
Honey is the royal sweetener of sweeteners. Funny to think that through the history of mankind honey was the sweetener for the poor and industrial sugar was the treat for royalty and wealthy part of society. Only after the findings that sugar is bad for you the tables have turned and honey receives its natural place at the top of the pyramid.
It is made out of flower nectar and amazingly persistent hard-working bees that work day and night to produce this wonder of nature.
How much honey is too much
Honey is healthier than sugar and is lower on the glycemic index (relative ranking of carbohydrates in specific food correlated to blood glucose levels impact in one’s body).
However, it can still cause blood sugar spikes (especially to people with diabetes), so it is important to monitor its consumption to prevent this unhealthy instability in blood sugar levels.
Currently recommended consumption of no more than 6 teaspoons of honey per day (the equivalent of approximately 2 tablespoons) under the understanding that there isn’t additional sugar consumption from other sources (such as bread, most serials, patisserie, sweetened drinks, sugared jams, etc.) which in that case still total intake should not be over 6 teaspoons.
Can you overdose on honey
Yes. you can. While honey is lower on the glycemic index than sugar and is considered as a natural source of sugar rather than industrial sugar it is still sugar! Glucose can be good and bad for you and if you ask yourself how come it can be both the answer lies upon one simple variable – balancing. Too much honey is not good for you.
Besides, overdose on honey can lead to weight gain, diabetes (in the long run of course), creation of unhealthy fat stored in our organs, impact on blood sugar and risk of illness and also worth mentioning that honey is forbidden to infants (risk of infant botulism) up to a certain age, so when thinking to start feeding your child with honey advised to go to your physician to check when is allowed.
Eating in a balanced manner is a must if one wishes to stay healthy and happy in life. If you wish to learn more about food that can keep you healthy try our post on this matter.
Health benefits of honey
Honey has it’s marvelous benefits as well. It improves heart health and prevents heart disease, providing us with antioxidants (which is good for our blood), help in the process of wound healing, ease cough and sore throat, help with athletic performances and some would say prevent cancer, reduce ulcers, ease digestive issues, etc.
Honey contains some nutrients, healthier than “regular sugar” especially for diabetics, when high quality posses a great amount of antioxidants that assist in lowering blood pressure, triglycerides and improve cholesterol.
And the taste, what about it?
Well, asking a wide range of people I can assure that honey taste is pretty lovable. However, it does taste different than plain industrial sugar and can change the taste and sometimes color or texture of food prepared with the addition of honey rather than sugar.
For example, to me it was odd in the beginning to add honey in my camomile tea as it made it brownish and different in flavor than the 1.5 teaspoons of sugar I used to add. I personally came to realize that this is acquired taste and now can’t think of drinking tea with sugar as the honey taste and texture is far richer and yummier. So give it a try.
Other than that, I would recommend that you switch to honey whenever the taste, color, and texture suits your palate, but you don’t have to do it all at once. A good way to make a healthy shift is to do things in steps, one step at a time. Until you are there.
Consuming too much of honey may cause adverse effects due to its high sugar and calorie content so the magic word is – balancing. Just like we talk about coffee consumption in our previous post.
Once we do that, all of the amazing advantages it brings comes to expression. Make sure you use this gift of nature mediated by our precious bees wisely as too much of anything is not good, whereas “just about right” is the name of the game – always have been, is, and will be.
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