Honey; it’s a sweetener that’s been around since the time of cavemen, but recently it’s barely been out of the news.

First there was the announcement that, after six decades of being called Sugar Puffs, the breakfast cereal will now be called Honey Monster Puffs — seemingly to get away from the negative connotation of the word ‘sugar’.

Then came news that honey sales had overtaken jam for the first time in Waitrose supermarkets, a trend attributed to a perception that honey is healthier. Market research company Mintel estimates honey sales totalled a staggering £112 million (Dh650 million) last year.

Having written a book about quitting it, I am no fan of sugar. A diet rich in sugar wrecks our children’s teeth, increases our waistlines and ruins our skin, it also alters our moods and even our sleep patterns.

It’s commonly accepted that honey is better for us, but is that really the case? The short answer is because it is made of 55 per cent fructose (fruit sugar), eating honey is little more beneficial for our bodies than eating granulated sugar. And here’s why.

Honey is still a sugar

Refined table sugar (sucrose) is processed in our bodies by insulin, which is produced by the pancreas. Honey is about 55 per cent fructose, a fruit sugar that’s processed by the liver. Despite the chemical difference, our bodies still react to honey in much same way as it reacts to refined sugar — with a blood-sugar spike.

This encourages the pancreas to produce insulin, which leads the body to store fat and gain weight. When eaten to excess, products containing fructose contribute to obesity, heart problems and liver disease, just like products with granulated sugar. Other research has shown fructose drains minerals from your body.

“There’s an idea that sugar is a pantomime villain and honey is the pantomime hero,” says nutritional therapist Ian Marber. “It’s not accurate. Loading honey on to a bowl of porridge or breakfast cereal isn’t much better for our bodies than layering that cereal up with granulated sugar.

“Honey is slightly lower on the glycaemic index (GI) than sugar (so it is absorbed into the body at a slightly slower rate), but it’s all about the language — when you think of honey you think of nature, bees, a farmer spooning honey from his hives into a jar that goes on the shelf in the local shop.

“When you think of sugar, images of plantations are conjured up; factories, processing, churning out of white granules. But most honey is far from bucolically produced and both are forms of sugar. Honey is not benign, it has a knock-on effect on the body like refined sugar. We want foods to be “good” or “bad” — but that’s not the case.’

 

IT’S HIGH CALORIE

Honey is also high in calories — more than table sugar. A teaspoon of commercial natural honey contains about 22 calories, a teaspoon of sugar around 16 calories. Many people who swapped honey for sugar found they liberally poured it into yoghurts, herbal teas and the like imagining honey to be superior to other sugars. “When people think something is low fat, they eat more,” says Ian Marber.

 

FEW MINERALS IN IT

“Companies use the word ‘honey’ instead of saying something is ‘sweet’ because they know it has an implied health benefit,” says Ian Marber.

While raw, unrefined varieties of honey — from farms and health food stores — do contain trace vitamins and minerals; niacin, riboflavin, thiamine and vitamin B6, they only make up about two per cent of honey’s total content.

Many big-brand honeys and other “natural” sweeteners in supermarkets have been processed — heated and filtered — to rid them of pollen and naturally-occurring bacteria in raw, varieties. But it also removes these vitamins and minerals.

 

BAD FOR TEETH

Dr Joe Bansal of the London Smile Clinic says: “Recently, a study by Public Health England found up to one in eight children suffers tooth decay by the age of three and warned that so-called “posh sugars” — dried fruit, smoothies, honey and the like — still cause cavities and decay.”

 

... AND YOUR SKIN

Dr Mica Engel, aesthetic doctor at London’s Waterhouse Young Clinic, says glucose, fructose and carbs in honey will cause collagen damage — just like sugar. “Benefits from the few extra vitamins some honey contains won’t help to repair damage done to your collagen.”

 

YOU DON’T NEED IT

Added sugar (refined white sugar or honey) has no nutritional benefit. The NHS says added sugar can safely make up 10 per cent of a daily calorie intake (50g or 12.5tsp a day for women, and 70g or 17.5tsp a day for men).

But earlier this year I spoke to cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, who is also science director of Action On Sugar, a body campaigning to reduce levels of sugar in our foods, who said the World Health Organisation recommends limiting all added sugars (including honey) to six teaspoons a day.

“Contrary to what the food industry wants you to believe, the body doesn’t need any carbohydrate from added sugar,” he said.

— Daily Mail