Honey Products ...

Honey Nutritional Value

Introduction
Honey has been used since thousands of years for its immense beneficial effect on human body. It not only provides nutritional supplements but also balances the body's physiological functions and helps in prevention and cure from certain diseases.

Benefit to the people

Product Benefits :
Benefits to the digestive apparatus
Honey is said to improve food assimilation and to be useful for chronic and infective intestinal problems such as constipation, duodenal ulcers and liver disturbances.

Benefits to the respiratory system
In temperate climates and places with considerable temperature fluctuations, honey is a well known remedy for colds and mouth, throat or bronchial irritations and infections. The benefits, apart from antibacterial effects, are assumed to relate to the soothing and relaxing effect of fructose.

Benefits to skin and wound healing
Honey is used in moisturizing and nourishing cosmetic creams, but also in pharmaceutical preparations applied directly on open wounds, sores, bed sores, ulcers, varicose ulcers and burns. It helps against infections, promotes tissue regeneration, and reduces scarring also in its pure, unprocessed form. If applied immediately, honey reduces blistering of burns and speeds regeneration of new tissue. Many case histories are reported in the literature for human as well as veterinary medicine sores, open wounds and teat lesions in cows.

Benefit to eye disorders
Clinical cases or traditional claims that honey reduces and cures eye cataracts, cures conjunctivitis and various afflictions of the cornea if applied directly into the eye are known from Europe, Asia, and Central America. There are also case histories of ceratitis rosacea and corneal ulcers, healed with pure honey or a 3 % sulphidine ointment in which Vaseline was replaced by honey.

Diabetes
Frequently, claims are voiced that honey is good for diabetics. This is unlikely to find confirmation because of its high sugar content. However, it is better than products made with cane sugar. It revealed that insulin levels were lower when compared to the uptake of equal caloric values of other foods, but blood sugar level was equal or higher than in the other compared products shortly after eating. In healthy individuals, the consumption of honey produced lower blood sugar readings than the consumption of the same quantity of sucrose.

Other benefits
Honey is said to normalize kidney function, reduce fevers and help insomnia. It is also supposed to help recovery from alcohol intoxication and protect the liver; effects also ascribed to fructose syrups. Heart, circulation and liver ailments and convalescent patients in general improved after injection with solutions of 20 and 40% honey in water.

Typical Composition
As a natural product, the composition of honey is highly variable.
Fructose/Glucose Ratio
Average: 1.23
Range: 0.76 - 1.86
Standard Deviation : 0.126