Recently, I showed you a study where they fed rats very large quantities of Coca-Cola, rich in fructose, versus Coca-Cola with no calories or water.
The rats who had high fructose corn syrup Coca-Cola were actually thinner than the other rats — not obese at all.
This was completely contrary to the expectations of the researchers and everybody else.
Now I want to talk about a study that compared honey with table sugar.
Honey is mostly carbohydrates, but it is not a simple substance.
Here’s an analysis of the carbohydrates in honey and there are probably many more that were not picked up:
Honey had much better effects than just sugar.
In the study, they gave 45 rats diets focused on different carbohydrates.
Some of the diets consisted of sugar carbohydrates, some of just honey carbohydrates, and some without any carbohydrates.
What they found was incredible!
Overall weight gain and body fat levels were significantly higher in sucrose-fed rats and similar for those fed honey or a sugar-free diet.
Researchers found that the A1C levels were LOWER in honey-fed rats.
HDL cholesterol (the so-called good kind) was higher also.
And they found greater bone mineral density in the honey-fed rats.
Greater bone mineral density means that their bones were stronger than the bones of the other mice.
Other than that, no differences.
What should we take from this study?
There is an anti-sugar mania today.
Sugar is vilified everywhere.
And yet, good studies are being done all the time showing that calories from the sugar are actually helpful.
In this study, they show that honey is more helpful than table sugar.
Honey has a lot of different types of sugar in it while table sugar consists of just sucrose.
Sucrose consists of a molecule that combines glucose with fructose.
Essentially eating sucrose is the same as eating glucose and fructose in the body.
Why should you consume more honey?
It’s no surprise that all the different nutritional benefits of honey are far greater than what we even know about today.
It makes a lot of sense to try to eat natural sugars as opposed to just table sugar.
In my own diet, I try to consume a lot of honey.
Why raw honey may not be your best bet.
Surprisingly enough, buying supermarket honey may be better for many people.
Raw honey has not been pasteurized.
It hasn’t been heated to kill parasites.
Raw honey contains a lot of the parts of pollen and its impurities that cause many people to have an allergic reaction.
Plain clarified supermarket honey may be your best bet if you want to consume honey and avoid allergies.
Citations
Honey
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/sweets/5568/2
The long-term effects of feeding honey compared with sucrose and a sugar-free diet on weight gain, lipid profiles, and DEXA measurements in rats
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18211352
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