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Honey
Lore and legend have endowed honey with unique nutritional and health giving qualities. It has been hailed as an aphrodisiac and an elixir of youth. In reality, however, it supplies little more than energy in the form of simple carbohydrates.
Honey is produced by bees from plant nectar and is a mixture of water and two simple sugars: fructose and glucose. The clearer honey, the higher the proportion of fructose, although honey will almost always granulate if it is kept long enough. Heating it will make it runny again.
Honey supplies negligible amounts of nutrients, but its tiny nutrient content does make it a slightly healthier option than refined white sugar, which contains nothing but empty calories. In fact, weight for weight, honey contains fewer calories than sugar - 288 as opposed to 394 per 100g - because one-quarter of it is water. But when substituting it for sugar in recipes, it is worth remembering that because it is denser, one tablespoon of honey weighs more than one tablespoon of sugar, so that substituting by volume rather than by weight would give you more calories.
The flavor of honey depends on which flowers the bees have visited. Acacia honey is mild and suitable for cooking, while chestnut honey has a distinctive, almost bitter taste.
Medicinal Properties
Honey still retains its reputation as a remedy for chest complaints, particularly for removing phlegm. It also has antiseptic properties - the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that it could help to heal wounds - and it is claimed that it acts as a decongestant. Honey can also act as a mild sedative, in the same way as sugar.
A drink for sore throats can be made by adding two teaspoons of honey and the juice of half a lemon to a glass of hot water. All sweet foods stimulate the brain to produce endorphins, which are the body's natural painkillers. The sweetened liquid also encourages the production of saliva, which helps to soothe a dry and irritated throat.
Honey Through The Ages
Honey has featured in religious festivals throughout the world as a food fit for the Gods. In Greek mythology, for example, young Zeus, having been rescued from his father, Cronus, was brought up in secret by the nymphs Adrasteia and Io, on a diet of milk and honey.
Long before beekeeping was introduced, Stone Age man valued honey from wild bees for its rarity as well as for its taste. In England, honey was the ordinary people's sweetener until the middle of the 17th century, while sugar was reserved for the nobility and the gentry. However, by the late 17th century, sugar was becoming the universal sweetener and honey the treat, hence the rhyme ' the Queen was in her parlor eating bread and honey'.
Royal Jelly
Worker bees produce royal jelly to feed the selected larvae that eventually become queens. Royal jelly is the richest natural source of pantothenic acid (although this is readily available from other foods) and is the only natural source of a most unusual fatty acid (10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid), to which some of its alleged effects are attributed. It is recommended to help debility and fatigue. However, there is no scientific evidence to support these or any similar claims as yet.
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