14 ms·

Honey consumption improves blood sugar and cholesterol levels, study suggests

257 points by WaitWaitWha 4y ago

WaitWaitWha 4y ago
Research paper for the basis of the article [0] [0]: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuac086/6827512?login=false https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/do...
- patorjk 4y ago
  I wonder if the submitted link should be changed to your link. I can access your link fine but I get an error when I try to access the submitted link.
itsmemattchung 4y ago
> This systematic review and meta-analysis showed that oral honey intake reduced fasting glucose, total cholesterol, LDL-C, fasting triglycerides, and ALT and increased HDL-C, IL-6, and TNF-α I was surprised to find out that the average glycemic index of honey is about 55, much lower than I had anticipated. Even so, I still find it counter intuitive that honey — majority sugar — can lower your fasting glucose.
- ollysb 4y ago
  I wonder if they're displacing other sugars with Honey. Speaking as a diabetic I find it very hard to believe that a spoonful of Honey in the morning is going to improve my day :)
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    Indeed: “We’re not saying you should start having honey if you currently avoid sugar,” Dr. Khan added. “The takeaway is more about replacement — if you’re using table sugar, syrup or another sweetener, switching those sugars for honey might lower cardiometabolic risks.”
    - amanj41 4y ago
      This is my recommendation on diet soda to people as well. The literature points to diet soda being a productive replacement for those currently drinking soda and desiring to lose weight. But the jury is still out on potential effects of diet on the microbiome and insulin sensitivity etc, so I wouldn't go encouraging people to pick it up for no reason.
  - trevyn 4y ago
    My intuition is that the non-sugar components of honey are responsible.
    - slothtrop 4y ago
      What might those be?
  - tcbawo 4y ago
    It seems that the species of bee and pollen source make a big difference in the consistency and flavor of honey. It would be interesting to know which types of honey are highest in the healthy compounds and lowest in unhealthiest compounds (presumably sugar).
    - simonsarris 4y ago
      notably honey made from mountain laurel ('Mad Honey') can be hazardous to your health, since every part of the plant is toxic.
  - MrYellowP 4y ago
    Unless you risk killing yourself by doing so, you should try and see what happens. I prefer honey over everything else. It's the smoothest form of sugar I've experienced and it's way more than just a source of sugar, too.
- basilgohar 4y ago
  I believe this kind of study will shed more light on how much more we have to learn about nutrition and how our body processes and metabolizes nutrients. I think a lot of nutrition has been, for lack of a better term, very basic and somewhat stoicimetric - fat consumed equals fat stored, cholesterol consumed equals cholesterol stored, and also treating manufactured sugars (e.g., High Fructose Corn Syrup) as equal to natural sugars such as what's found in fruits and honey. This and many other studies have shown that this parity between input/output is not what happens nor is it an adequate reflection of how our body works. Treating the body as a simple machine in this manner is very naïve and has lead, in my opinion, to a huge amount of misapplied health advice or just outright wrong policies. Of course, the factors driving this have profited handsomely from this misdirection, but that's another angle suitable for it's own thread.
  - cromka 4y ago
    Not so recently the similarly shocking findings about the Mediterranean cuisine rich in animal fat also contradicted the common beliefs regarding the saturated fats. If I may be allowed to speculate, I think it could simply have a lot to do with the very basic idea of consuming processed vs natural foods. So refined sugar = bad, refined fats = bad. Our bodies have evolved to optimize digestion and make most of those natural ingredients, but not the artificial, industrial products we had been exposed for mere 150-200 years. EDIT: for more background, what was stunning is that some cuisines in Mediterranean, like Spanish or North Italian, can be quite heavy on meat, yet that did not negatively correlate with the lifespan, compared to more lightweight variates in the region. I can’t recall the paperwork, but that was the general gist.
    - soco 4y ago
      I guess "refined" should be probably understood as "many ingredients, seemingly important but unknown to actual medicine, filtered out"...
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      Can you share more? The balance of evidence against saturated fats is quite clear, and there are usually good responses to find around single studies that purport to show countervailing evidence. The biggest example of this is that it’s hard to find a cohort that contains substantially different levels of saturated fat intake (very low vs very high). So the quintiles inside the same cohort don’t necessarily have significant outcome differences, and that’s peddled as saturated fat not being bad for you.
- nekoashide 4y ago
  I would expect that there's something else at play, it's entirely possible that natural honey contains some organic chemical that increases metabolism in humans.
  - ReptileMan 4y ago
    Honey is acidic. I think that the main problem in the western diet is that we don't balance sugar and starch with enough spices, hot stuff or acid.
    - CaptainNegative 4y ago
      Whatever you eat gets dissolved by something like 10-20 teaspoons of stomach acid, which is roughly 100x-500x more acidic (linear scale) than honey. By the time it gets there a teaspoon of honey is not making a dent in the overall acidity.
      - karlshea 4y ago
        My father got caught up in nutrition conspiracy and "alkaline diets", and now won't have a milkshake with a hamburger because "all the milk makes it harder to digest" since according to him it's neutralizing your stomach acid. I think it's mostly that somewhere along the line he missed how logarithmic scales work.
        Fnoord 4y ago
        Oh yeah, I read a book on that ages ago (start of millennium), by some fellow called Harvey Diamond. Just looked him up, looks like his royalties have dwindled and his son got jail time for a ponzi scheme. Hey, if it leads to your father consuming less unhealthy food (which milkshake and hamburger both arguably are) it works. Just for a different reason. And that different reason gives the faulty one credibility.
        karlshea 4y ago
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  There's absolutely no way to assess the likelihood of lowering your fasting glucose via eating more honey without knowing what you're already eating. The paper itself describes the characteristics of the control groups of the included trials: > Trial comparisons included the participant’s usual diet (70% of studies), sucrose (15%), high-fructose corn syrup (6%), and mixed comparators (9%). Kind of hard to know what "the participant's usual diet" means, but I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say the intervention probably helped people who were otherwise eating a bunch of table sugar, HFCS, or both, and didn't help if you weren't eating sugar to begin with. The average diet of a person participating in studies like this is probably close to an average American diet, that is, high in added sugar. Don't expect honey to be some kind of miracle panacea food. It's just better than table sugar and HFCS.
- brightball 4y ago
  I used to put honey in my coffee when I still sweetened it. I read something about it having a slower release process and noticed I didn't have the same ups and downs throughout the day. There wasn't a sugar crash. Now I just drink black coffee but I do occasionally add honey in my tea. It's a great thing to keep around the house and can also be used to disinfect a cut.[1] 1 - https://www.sevengrains.com/the-healing-power-of-honey/ https://www.sevengrains.com/the-healing-power-of-honey/
  - dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
    >I read something about it having a slower release process and noticed I didn't have the same ups and downs throughout the day. There wasn't a sugar crash. Hey, thanks for putting out your anecdote. In the absence of good mainstream science, anecdotes end up being an important source of 'data' for me.
- thebigspacefuck 4y ago
  Does sugar raise fasting glucose in non-diabetics?
- version_five 4y ago
  Fructose is metabolized via triglycerides iirc and so has a longer and different pathway to becoming blood sugar. That doesn't in itself mean anything good or bad. Honey is basically the same sucrose/fructose ratio as high fructose corn syrup, for what it's worth
- Fnoord 4y ago
  Define honey. There are various types of honey, and I read the other day that honey from China is not 100% honey but is essentially something else which also contains honey.
  - jmhobbs 4y ago
    Even among 100% real honey, the ratios of sucrose, glucose and fructose vary wildly. At the extremes tupelo honey is very high fructose, and thus is famous for not crystallizing easily. On the other hand, canola/rapeseed swings so far the other way that it can crystalize in the comb before harvesting.
  - ahzhou 4y ago
    Most supermarket honey, China or not, is HFCS + honey. A beekeeper told me that the biggest indicator of real honey is that it solidifies with time. Because of that, it’s usually sold in glass containers so that you can heat it up to re-liquify it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- StreamBright 4y ago
  This just shows how bad table sugar really is (as well as HFCS for that matter).
- imchillyb 4y ago
  Glucose and Sucrose are not similar. Glucose is easily and readily available for the body's use, with little processing, and can be metabolized quickly energizing the brain directly (brains feed on glucose). The majority of the sugars in Honey are the glucose type and those are 'better' sugars for humans. I'm a type 2 diabetic and I utilize honey instead of sugar wherever possible. I've been doing this for several years now, and there was a definite and definitive corrolation between my A1C levels prior to switching and after switching to Honey.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > The majority of the sugars in Honey are the glucose type Multiple sources say that honey is around 30% glucose, 40% fructose.
- svnt 4y ago
  Honey is not sugar/sucrose — honey is an invert sugar which can be used directly by cells as a source of energy, whereas sucrose cannot. Bees also cannot eat sugar. In the invert form your body, including your digestive lining, can put it directly to work. I do not know if this is still the case if you dissolve it in tea or another hot beverage. I believe it is not.
  - Anthony-G 4y ago
    > Bees also cannot eat sugar. Are you sure about that? I came across this article in another comment: https://carolinahoneybees.com/feeding-bees-sugar-water/ https://carolinahoneybees.com/feeding-bees-sugar-water/
adamsmith143 4y ago
>honey is also a complex composition of common and rare sugars, proteins, organic acids and other bioactive compounds that very likely have health benefits. Seems like an extremely ripe area for Biotech research. Add this mix of compounds to most processed foods and you get a blanket improvement in health outcomes. Would be a miracle
scaredginger 4y ago
Can someone in the know tell me whether this should be ignored like most nutritional research?
- rscho 4y ago
  Yes.
- mrlinx 4y ago
  Can you explain why, or link me to some reference?
  - amanj41 4y ago
    AFAIK (not an expert) there are two common problems with nutritional research 1) Mechanistic data we don't fully understand the implications of. This basically means we observe mechanisms that we believe ought to have some effect on people, and yet when longitudinal studies are done to measure actual long term effects, they are not statistically significant 2) Confounding factors. In longitudinal studies, it can be very difficult to fully control for confounding factors, as diets are very complex. Take a hypothetical red meat study, where participants are simply instructed to eat "more red meat". Is a McDonalds burger different than a lean, grassfed steak? That's an easy one to control for, not the best example. But basically exemplifying how there can be a lot of variability within the intervention itself when it comes to nutrition
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- sph 4y ago
  Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34015681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34015681
- rat9988 4y ago
  No. Unless conflict of interest,most nutritional research shouldn't be ignored. How you interpret academic research is up to you, and might be out of your league.
enqk 4y ago
Does it still holds for the fake honey (glucose syrup with added fake pollen) that we often find in lieu of real honey?
aatd86 4y ago
One of my relatives tried that and actually found out that her blood glucose levels had actually worsened. She must have seen some of these facebook viral posts abouymt the benefits of raw honey consumption. Probably has to be taken in moderation. In any case, just anecdotal.
- brink 4y ago
  Did she take care to source her honey from reputable sources? A lot of "honey" is honey mixed with syrup.
  - aatd86 4y ago
    Imported from Africa, with the honeycomb. Specific flowers and straight from the owner. She even filtered it herself.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  You should be careful with honey as there is a lot of fake honey in circulation, mostly from China. When possible, only buy artisan honey or honey sold at reputable local shops.
  - brightball 4y ago
    Local honey is supposed to have a benefit of helping your body deal with allergens as well.
    - e44858 4y ago
      That’s because it contains small amounts of the pollen you might be allergic to. So it’s really important that it’s raw, because you don’t want to cook the proteins that the pollen is made of.
      - hmmdar 4y ago
        Why do you not want to cook the proteins? Does it break them down to uselessness, or do the become harmful?
greenhearth 4y ago
Too bad the bees are done. Maybe the AI guys can leave artists alone and jump on this looming mass extinction thing. Would be nice to solve something that needs solving for a change.
- jmhobbs 4y ago
  The domestic honey bee is honestly doing fine these days, varroa is better understood and controlled (for now) in captive populations.
sph 4y ago
> Overall, honey reduced fasting glucose (MD = −0.20 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.37 to −0.04 mmol/L; low certainty of evidence), total cholesterol (MD = −0.18 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.33 to −0.04 mmol/L; low certainty), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (MD = −0.16 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.30 to −0.02 mmol/L; low certainty), fasting triglycerides (MD = −0.13 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.20 to −0.07 mmol/L; low certainty), and alanine aminotransferase (MD = −9.75 U/L, 95%CI, −18.29 to −1.21 U/L; low certainty) and increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (MD = 0.07 mmol/L, 95%CI, 0.04–0.10 mmol/L; high certainty). -- Note the amount of "low certainty". Note the confidence intervals. This is what passes for dietary science these days, gets news headlines and people in this thread and elsewhere taking it as gospel. I guess no one even took the time to read the abstract of the paper. EDIT: the list of funding sources and potential conflict of interests at the end of the paper is a sight to behold: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuac086/6827512?login=false#381075738 https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/do...
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Believe science
  - the-printer 4y ago
    I don’t know the motivations behind your (apparently) whimsical comment, but it speaks volumes to how a study as inoffensive as the beneficial effects of honey can invite so much discord, scrutiny and counter-argumentative “anecdata” when it’s deemed rebellious, dim-witted and conspiratorial to do the same for other scientific research.
    - svnt 4y ago
      It’s because Big Honey hasn’t polarized the collective yet, just wait.
- jdthedisciple 4y ago
  Those are are all reductions with 95% certainty. That's somewhat significant, especially combined, is it not?
Cenk 4y ago
Paper here: https://oa.mg/pdf/10.1093-nutrit-nuac086.pdf https://oa.mg/pdf/10.1093-nutrit-nuac086.pdf
lr4444lr 4y ago
Still never gets old. As Juvenal said, it's hard not to write satire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG6Hrh4v08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG6Hrh4v08
Kukumber 4y ago
title: "honey consumption improves.." content: "honey consumption MAY improve" ".. when consumed within a healthy dietary pattern" let's share this article!
_0j9w 4y ago
This is why I exclusively drink Jack Daniel's tennessee honey whisky during work hours.
petergrace 4y ago
These results seem inconsistent with the current understanding that the majority of the sugar in honey comes from fructose, and as such can be very damaging to the liver (fructose is a major contributing factor for 'fatty liver disease.') 'Use in moderation' is a fine cover-your-butt, but how many people do you know who consume anything in moderation, especially in the USA?
- adrian_b 4y ago
  In moderate quantities, fructose cannot be harmful. Nevertheless, with easy access to concentrated forms, like sugar, but also honey and dried fruits, it has become possible to eat too much fructose per day, which is guaranteed to have bad health effects, like damaging the liver. The recommendation that I have seen is to eat up to 50 g/day of sugar, i.e. up to 25 g/day of fructose. When eating only fresh or defrosted fruits, it is easy to follow this, because the upper limit corresponds with around 500 g of most cultivated fruits or with around 300 g of the sweetest fruits, like grapes or fresh figs. On the other hand, a single chocolate may contain more than 60 g of sugar.
aritmo 4y ago
"Honey, especially robinia, clover, and unprocessed raw honey, may improve.." Scientific papers on the benefits of honey tend to be infomercials for the honey industry. How do you figure it out? If the suggested "good" honey is limited to a specific geographic region. The local honey industry can benefit from the positive exposure. They don't do these informecials if the honey can be obtained from all over the world. Where does the Robinia tree grow natively? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia
- syrgian 4y ago
  Doesn't "unprocessed raw honey" include all quality honey, anyway? My guess is that most processed raw honey is not as good (or even bad), but those (robinia and clover) might be better than the rest. Still, I would rather get unprocessed robinia/clover honey rather than their processed variants.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    According to the article, "processing" refers to heating. Most commercial honey has been pasteurized, which appears to destroy whatever substance exists in raw honey and has favorable effect on glycemia. Even using honey in a too hot drink or in a baked cake might eliminate most of the health effects of raw honey.
zzzeek 4y ago
I'm over "food X will lower your cholesterol" headlines. if you have a cholesterol problem, your options are: 1. cut saturated fats in the diet by at least 80% 2. take statins I do maybe 30% of option 1 and 80% of option 2 (low dose). As I get older, the effectiveness of the statins appears to decrease so I'd like to raise my dose but my doc is not on board yet. LDL cholesterol is no joke so I dont get the point of these "X might reduce your cholesterol a tiny amount if you have an amazing diet already", well great
- sph 4y ago
  To say LDL cholesterol is misunderstood is an understatement. I recommend this as a primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXKJaQeteE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXKJaQeteE0 tl;dw: there are many types of LDL which are not adequately represented in blood tests, unless subject to expensive centrifuges. LDL is how the body delivers fatty acids to be used as energy to the rest of the body, but in contact with high levels of sugar, becomes glycated, vulnerable to oxidation and stays in the bloodstream instead of being used or reabsorbed by the liver. Then it accumulates in the walls lining your arteries. So the take away is: do not eat tons of fat with tons of sugar if you care about your arteries. One or the other are not necessarily bad. Also statins are terrible with worse side effects. Fix your diet, not the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests.
  - dabraham1248 4y ago
    > Also statins are terrible with worse side effects. Fix your diet, not the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests. Whether or not to take a statin is a _complicated_ decision, based on _many_ variables. Maybe statins didn't work out in your situation, but please don't suggest things like this. "Fix your diet" is _very_ difficult, as well as ambiguous (e.g. carnivores and vegans will both claim that their diet will save lives. Vegans have more actual data, carnivores are louder and more interested in pointing out possible mechanisms). The best research we have suggests that statins save a _lot_ of lives. _And_ that most of the "adverse reaction to statin" effects are statistically indistinguishable from people who aren't on statins. Heck, look at the "Adverse Effects" section of the wikipedia page. Cerivastatin _did_ raise the risk of muscle issues, some of them serious. But A) not by much, and B) it's been withdrawn for > 20 years. FWIW, I'm one of those people who eats "well", runs, lifts, meditates, used to drink white wine until the correlation was disproved,... and still had a cholesterol over 500. Until I started taking my current statin. That means I'm actually one of the comparatively few people on a statin who doesn't know that it reduces my risk (the mechanism of cholesterol regulation and/or production in me is different than in most people. We don't actually know whether statins lower my risk. We do know that statins lower my cholesterol, and that lowers risk for people with the more common mechanisms, so I'm playing the odds.). Re: side effects, I _think_ I had increased muscle soreness after lifting when I started on statins, but I googled, and that's also a thing that just happens to people around 40. Right now I'm 50, pulling more than twice what I weigh, and still running, so it can't be _that_ big an issue. It's not like I was a professional athlete until I started taking statins. Which is a sample size of 1, but that's backed up by the studies, so... > "not the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests" We know that lowering "the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests" correlates with lowering your risk of cardiovascular issues. So actually, yes, as a rule, lower the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood test. Statins aren't the only way, but they do a lot of good for a lot of people. NB: I'm not affiliated with any statin producer, except that I take a statin daily. I'm also not a doctor, but I've had ridiculously high cholesterol since I was in utero, and have been trying to keep abreast of the research for about 30 years now.
cgartner 4y ago
bedast 4y ago
> However, the evidence for this effect in human studies has not been systematically evaluated and quantified. One thing I noticed in the paper is a lack of breakdown of results based on diabetic diagnosis. With almost half of participants being "healthy" and only 21% being "diabetic" (specifically not isolating Type 1 from Type 2 and not specifying other diabetic conditions), the results of whether this information is useful to a diabetic gets skewed. This is a harmful way to present this information because people will read into this that honey will help a diabetic. In fact, there's a comment to the linked article asking where a diabetic might find more information. To be clear: Type 1 and 3 diabetics will need to dose the same amount of insulin for the carbs as they would any other sugar. Type 2 diabetics and PCOS will see a similar spike based on the glycemic index and the amount consumed. LADA and MODY will need to do whatever they normally do. If you're having glucose control issues already, this is not going to be a remedy and should not be sought as one. If you do have good glucose control, this MIGHT be something to watch for more research. Otherwise, this should have no bearing on your diabetic treatment.
jablala 4y ago
Besides the question of the legitimacy of this post. I would encourage everyone to go and explore horrible practice of honey production. Along with the effects honey bees having on native species and wild bees. Which ties in to effective pollinators and why we hear about "rapid decreasing bee population".
- durkie 4y ago
  Could you be more specific? I kept bees for a decade and don't know what you're referring to.
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. What is the research you would recommend folks look at? I'm not clear on the conclusion you are coming to... is producing honey via bee farms bad for local environments??
  - jmhobbs 4y ago
    The argument is that non-native honey bees (if you live in the US) put pressure on the native pollinators competing for the same food sources. It makes sense logically, since commercial producers will have huge bee yards and do migratory beekeeping to follow the pollination contracts and the honey flows. I have not, however, ever seen a study on it. I've also never really gone looking.
uptownfunk 4y ago
Honey has been consumed for hundreds if not thousands of years. In ancient medicinal systems it is given a special status as a conduit for herbs and medicines. Even the ancient rg vedic texts make special mention of honey. It is also used in ritualistic worship. Obviously none of that has to mean anything from a scientific lens, but it does seem interesting why it tends to pop up across history in interesting ways. Frankly I think it is also mentioned because it is edible and sweet and mildly intoxicating in large quantities and can also be made into mead
smm11 4y ago
Dangerous to say this, and quite likely very wrong. As is the belief that sugar does not drive high cholesterol.
twawaaay 4y ago
> Honey, especially robinia (also known as acacia honey, a honey from false acacia or black locust trees), clover, and unprocessed raw honey, may improve glycemic control and lipid levels when consumed within a healthy dietary pattern, (...) The key word here is "within a healthy dietary pattern". Unfortunately, most people in US are not on a healthy dietary pattern and have some level of insulin resistance which means any benefits would probably be smaller than added damage. Whoever is looking to improve their health I would urge to skip any notion sugary products are going to make them healthier until they are sure they got rid of their insulin resistance. (disclaimer: I am not a dietician or even doctor at all. Please, don't construe this as professional advice. I am just a geek who is spending a huge amount of time trying to separate actual information from overwhelming disinformation on anything related to dieting.)
liendolucas 4y ago
Basically any form of sugar is to put it in simple words a poison. As far as I understand every living organism produces glucose, which if I'm not mistaken is the fuel of life. So if human bodies already produce glucose there shouldn't be any need for anyone to ingest sugar in any of its forms. I have read many years ago a very a interesting book backed by scientific data about this topic but I can't remember the name of it.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Completely incorrect. Where do you think glucose comes from? Many processes in the body produce water. This does not obviate the need to drink.
  - liendolucas 4y ago
    Maybe I made a mistake. What I meant is that when you ingest food the body processes it and one of the products is glucose. So you can completely put aside all sugar ingestion, that's what I wanted to say. You've said that everything I said is completely incorrect so it would be great if you can expand yourself why everything is so wrong.
  - manmal 4y ago
    Partially correct. Gluconeogenesis produces sufficient glucose for (adult) humans to survive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis Edit: Added „adult“
- casperc 4y ago
  Well that settles it then…
- adamdusty 4y ago
  Any form of sugar? That includes essentially all fruits and most vegetables.
StreamBright 4y ago
It is not a surprise. Honey has a GI of 60.
osigurdson 4y ago
It is almost like these "studies" are sitting on a stack, ready for publication when there isn't a lot of interesting news. Coffee good, coffee bad. Wine good (in moderation), wine bad, eggs good, eggs bad, etc., etc. Delete.
ngoilapites 4y ago
Honey makes me smart, or so I feel. It awakens some interesting mental dynamics on myself. How? No other sugar does it, perhaps a bit maple juice.
recursive__ 4y ago
megamix 4y ago
Just thanks for sharing this!
Syzygies 4y ago
The "Honey Souk" in Morocco's Marakech medina sells the best and most diverse selection of honey I've ever seen. If I could travel one hour at a time, I'd go get Shirunashi Tantanmen ramen noodles at King-ken in Hiroshima, then go honey shopping at the Honey Souk in Marakech. This ramen is a reason to visit Hiroshima, it's that good. This honey is a reason to visit Marakech, it's that good. (Otherwise, if one visits one medina, it should be Fes.) There are too many people missing legs in Morocco from diabetes for me to easily accept this study.
rapatel0 4y ago
Nutrition studies are almost always shit and mainstream articles are 99% garbage. Error in Nutrition studies - People drop out -> introduces bias - human survey data is used -> people lie Journalists run the same stupid playbook - Watch XYZ journal for a new article - Read abstract and infer something - "almonds can lower BLANK and increase muscle mass" - Write article about how scientists say almonds are gonna change your life - (if bodybuilding) insert a workout optimized for almonds
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
Natural sugar water raises blood sugar? No way!
ck2 4y ago
Best "fun-fact" about honey is it never spoils. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-behind-honeys-eternal-shelf-life-1218690/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-be...
11235813213455 4y ago
Fruits are quite better for us, because their fiber, ripe to fermented is better too
lxe 4y ago
I think meta analysis papers can be replaced with AI relatively soon.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Jamesmoorez 4y ago
keepquestioning 4y ago
Is the sugar in Honey/Fruit better than the sugar in say, twinkies?

257 points by WaitWaitWha 4y ago

Research paper for the basis of the article [0] [0]: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuac086/6827512?login=false https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/do...

patorjk 4y ago
I wonder if the submitted link should be changed to your link. I can access your link fine but I get an error when I try to access the submitted link.

itsmemattchung 4y ago

> This systematic review and meta-analysis showed that oral honey intake reduced fasting glucose, total cholesterol, LDL-C, fasting triglycerides, and ALT and increased HDL-C, IL-6, and TNF-α I was surprised to find out that the average glycemic index of honey is about 55, much lower than I had anticipated. Even so, I still find it counter intuitive that honey — majority sugar — can lower your fasting glucose.

ollysb 4y ago
I wonder if they're displacing other sugars with Honey. Speaking as a diabetic I find it very hard to believe that a spoonful of Honey in the morning is going to improve my day :)
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Indeed: “We’re not saying you should start having honey if you currently avoid sugar,” Dr. Khan added. “The takeaway is more about replacement — if you’re using table sugar, syrup or another sweetener, switching those sugars for honey might lower cardiometabolic risks.”
  - amanj41 4y ago
    This is my recommendation on diet soda to people as well. The literature points to diet soda being a productive replacement for those currently drinking soda and desiring to lose weight. But the jury is still out on potential effects of diet on the microbiome and insulin sensitivity etc, so I wouldn't go encouraging people to pick it up for no reason.
- trevyn 4y ago
  My intuition is that the non-sugar components of honey are responsible.
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    What might those be?
- tcbawo 4y ago
  It seems that the species of bee and pollen source make a big difference in the consistency and flavor of honey. It would be interesting to know which types of honey are highest in the healthy compounds and lowest in unhealthiest compounds (presumably sugar).
  - simonsarris 4y ago
    notably honey made from mountain laurel ('Mad Honey') can be hazardous to your health, since every part of the plant is toxic.
- MrYellowP 4y ago
  Unless you risk killing yourself by doing so, you should try and see what happens. I prefer honey over everything else. It's the smoothest form of sugar I've experienced and it's way more than just a source of sugar, too.
basilgohar 4y ago
I believe this kind of study will shed more light on how much more we have to learn about nutrition and how our body processes and metabolizes nutrients. I think a lot of nutrition has been, for lack of a better term, very basic and somewhat stoicimetric - fat consumed equals fat stored, cholesterol consumed equals cholesterol stored, and also treating manufactured sugars (e.g., High Fructose Corn Syrup) as equal to natural sugars such as what's found in fruits and honey. This and many other studies have shown that this parity between input/output is not what happens nor is it an adequate reflection of how our body works. Treating the body as a simple machine in this manner is very naïve and has lead, in my opinion, to a huge amount of misapplied health advice or just outright wrong policies. Of course, the factors driving this have profited handsomely from this misdirection, but that's another angle suitable for it's own thread.
- cromka 4y ago
  Not so recently the similarly shocking findings about the Mediterranean cuisine rich in animal fat also contradicted the common beliefs regarding the saturated fats. If I may be allowed to speculate, I think it could simply have a lot to do with the very basic idea of consuming processed vs natural foods. So refined sugar = bad, refined fats = bad. Our bodies have evolved to optimize digestion and make most of those natural ingredients, but not the artificial, industrial products we had been exposed for mere 150-200 years. EDIT: for more background, what was stunning is that some cuisines in Mediterranean, like Spanish or North Italian, can be quite heavy on meat, yet that did not negatively correlate with the lifespan, compared to more lightweight variates in the region. I can’t recall the paperwork, but that was the general gist.
  - soco 4y ago
    I guess "refined" should be probably understood as "many ingredients, seemingly important but unknown to actual medicine, filtered out"...
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Can you share more? The balance of evidence against saturated fats is quite clear, and there are usually good responses to find around single studies that purport to show countervailing evidence. The biggest example of this is that it’s hard to find a cohort that contains substantially different levels of saturated fat intake (very low vs very high). So the quintiles inside the same cohort don’t necessarily have significant outcome differences, and that’s peddled as saturated fat not being bad for you.
nekoashide 4y ago
I would expect that there's something else at play, it's entirely possible that natural honey contains some organic chemical that increases metabolism in humans.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  Honey is acidic. I think that the main problem in the western diet is that we don't balance sugar and starch with enough spices, hot stuff or acid.
  - CaptainNegative 4y ago
    Whatever you eat gets dissolved by something like 10-20 teaspoons of stomach acid, which is roughly 100x-500x more acidic (linear scale) than honey. By the time it gets there a teaspoon of honey is not making a dent in the overall acidity.
    - karlshea 4y ago
      My father got caught up in nutrition conspiracy and "alkaline diets", and now won't have a milkshake with a hamburger because "all the milk makes it harder to digest" since according to him it's neutralizing your stomach acid. I think it's mostly that somewhere along the line he missed how logarithmic scales work.
      - Fnoord 4y ago
        Oh yeah, I read a book on that ages ago (start of millennium), by some fellow called Harvey Diamond. Just looked him up, looks like his royalties have dwindled and his son got jail time for a ponzi scheme. Hey, if it leads to your father consuming less unhealthy food (which milkshake and hamburger both arguably are) it works. Just for a different reason. And that different reason gives the faulty one credibility.
        karlshea 4y ago
nonameiguess 4y ago
There's absolutely no way to assess the likelihood of lowering your fasting glucose via eating more honey without knowing what you're already eating. The paper itself describes the characteristics of the control groups of the included trials: > Trial comparisons included the participant’s usual diet (70% of studies), sucrose (15%), high-fructose corn syrup (6%), and mixed comparators (9%). Kind of hard to know what "the participant's usual diet" means, but I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say the intervention probably helped people who were otherwise eating a bunch of table sugar, HFCS, or both, and didn't help if you weren't eating sugar to begin with. The average diet of a person participating in studies like this is probably close to an average American diet, that is, high in added sugar. Don't expect honey to be some kind of miracle panacea food. It's just better than table sugar and HFCS.
brightball 4y ago
I used to put honey in my coffee when I still sweetened it. I read something about it having a slower release process and noticed I didn't have the same ups and downs throughout the day. There wasn't a sugar crash. Now I just drink black coffee but I do occasionally add honey in my tea. It's a great thing to keep around the house and can also be used to disinfect a cut.[1] 1 - https://www.sevengrains.com/the-healing-power-of-honey/ https://www.sevengrains.com/the-healing-power-of-honey/
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  >I read something about it having a slower release process and noticed I didn't have the same ups and downs throughout the day. There wasn't a sugar crash. Hey, thanks for putting out your anecdote. In the absence of good mainstream science, anecdotes end up being an important source of 'data' for me.
thebigspacefuck 4y ago
Does sugar raise fasting glucose in non-diabetics?
version_five 4y ago
Fructose is metabolized via triglycerides iirc and so has a longer and different pathway to becoming blood sugar. That doesn't in itself mean anything good or bad. Honey is basically the same sucrose/fructose ratio as high fructose corn syrup, for what it's worth
Fnoord 4y ago
Define honey. There are various types of honey, and I read the other day that honey from China is not 100% honey but is essentially something else which also contains honey.
- jmhobbs 4y ago
  Even among 100% real honey, the ratios of sucrose, glucose and fructose vary wildly. At the extremes tupelo honey is very high fructose, and thus is famous for not crystallizing easily. On the other hand, canola/rapeseed swings so far the other way that it can crystalize in the comb before harvesting.
- ahzhou 4y ago
  Most supermarket honey, China or not, is HFCS + honey. A beekeeper told me that the biggest indicator of real honey is that it solidifies with time. Because of that, it’s usually sold in glass containers so that you can heat it up to re-liquify it.
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StreamBright 4y ago
This just shows how bad table sugar really is (as well as HFCS for that matter).
imchillyb 4y ago
Glucose and Sucrose are not similar. Glucose is easily and readily available for the body's use, with little processing, and can be metabolized quickly energizing the brain directly (brains feed on glucose). The majority of the sugars in Honey are the glucose type and those are 'better' sugars for humans. I'm a type 2 diabetic and I utilize honey instead of sugar wherever possible. I've been doing this for several years now, and there was a definite and definitive corrolation between my A1C levels prior to switching and after switching to Honey.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > The majority of the sugars in Honey are the glucose type Multiple sources say that honey is around 30% glucose, 40% fructose.
svnt 4y ago
Honey is not sugar/sucrose — honey is an invert sugar which can be used directly by cells as a source of energy, whereas sucrose cannot. Bees also cannot eat sugar. In the invert form your body, including your digestive lining, can put it directly to work. I do not know if this is still the case if you dissolve it in tea or another hot beverage. I believe it is not.
- Anthony-G 4y ago
  > Bees also cannot eat sugar. Are you sure about that? I came across this article in another comment: https://carolinahoneybees.com/feeding-bees-sugar-water/ https://carolinahoneybees.com/feeding-bees-sugar-water/

adamsmith143 4y ago

>honey is also a complex composition of common and rare sugars, proteins, organic acids and other bioactive compounds that very likely have health benefits. Seems like an extremely ripe area for Biotech research. Add this mix of compounds to most processed foods and you get a blanket improvement in health outcomes. Would be a miracle

scaredginger 4y ago

Can someone in the know tell me whether this should be ignored like most nutritional research?

rscho 4y ago
Yes.
mrlinx 4y ago
Can you explain why, or link me to some reference?
- amanj41 4y ago
  AFAIK (not an expert) there are two common problems with nutritional research 1) Mechanistic data we don't fully understand the implications of. This basically means we observe mechanisms that we believe ought to have some effect on people, and yet when longitudinal studies are done to measure actual long term effects, they are not statistically significant 2) Confounding factors. In longitudinal studies, it can be very difficult to fully control for confounding factors, as diets are very complex. Take a hypothetical red meat study, where participants are simply instructed to eat "more red meat". Is a McDonalds burger different than a lean, grassfed steak? That's an easy one to control for, not the best example. But basically exemplifying how there can be a lot of variability within the intervention itself when it comes to nutrition
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
sph 4y ago
Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34015681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34015681
rat9988 4y ago
No. Unless conflict of interest,most nutritional research shouldn't be ignored. How you interpret academic research is up to you, and might be out of your league.

enqk 4y ago

Does it still holds for the fake honey (glucose syrup with added fake pollen) that we often find in lieu of real honey?

aatd86 4y ago

One of my relatives tried that and actually found out that her blood glucose levels had actually worsened. She must have seen some of these facebook viral posts abouymt the benefits of raw honey consumption. Probably has to be taken in moderation. In any case, just anecdotal.

brink 4y ago
Did she take care to source her honey from reputable sources? A lot of "honey" is honey mixed with syrup.
- aatd86 4y ago
  Imported from Africa, with the honeycomb. Specific flowers and straight from the owner. She even filtered it herself.
stephc_int13 4y ago
You should be careful with honey as there is a lot of fake honey in circulation, mostly from China. When possible, only buy artisan honey or honey sold at reputable local shops.
- brightball 4y ago
  Local honey is supposed to have a benefit of helping your body deal with allergens as well.
  - e44858 4y ago
    That’s because it contains small amounts of the pollen you might be allergic to. So it’s really important that it’s raw, because you don’t want to cook the proteins that the pollen is made of.
    - hmmdar 4y ago
      Why do you not want to cook the proteins? Does it break them down to uselessness, or do the become harmful?

greenhearth 4y ago

Too bad the bees are done. Maybe the AI guys can leave artists alone and jump on this looming mass extinction thing. Would be nice to solve something that needs solving for a change.

jmhobbs 4y ago
The domestic honey bee is honestly doing fine these days, varroa is better understood and controlled (for now) in captive populations.

sph 4y ago

> Overall, honey reduced fasting glucose (MD = −0.20 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.37 to −0.04 mmol/L; low certainty of evidence), total cholesterol (MD = −0.18 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.33 to −0.04 mmol/L; low certainty), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (MD = −0.16 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.30 to −0.02 mmol/L; low certainty), fasting triglycerides (MD = −0.13 mmol/L, 95%CI, −0.20 to −0.07 mmol/L; low certainty), and alanine aminotransferase (MD = −9.75 U/L, 95%CI, −18.29 to −1.21 U/L; low certainty) and increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (MD = 0.07 mmol/L, 95%CI, 0.04–0.10 mmol/L; high certainty). -- Note the amount of "low certainty". Note the confidence intervals. This is what passes for dietary science these days, gets news headlines and people in this thread and elsewhere taking it as gospel. I guess no one even took the time to read the abstract of the paper. EDIT: the list of funding sources and potential conflict of interests at the end of the paper is a sight to behold: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuac086/6827512?login=false#381075738 https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/do...

moonchrome 4y ago
Believe science
- the-printer 4y ago
  I don’t know the motivations behind your (apparently) whimsical comment, but it speaks volumes to how a study as inoffensive as the beneficial effects of honey can invite so much discord, scrutiny and counter-argumentative “anecdata” when it’s deemed rebellious, dim-witted and conspiratorial to do the same for other scientific research.
  - svnt 4y ago
    It’s because Big Honey hasn’t polarized the collective yet, just wait.
jdthedisciple 4y ago
Those are are all reductions with 95% certainty. That's somewhat significant, especially combined, is it not?

Cenk 4y ago

Paper here: https://oa.mg/pdf/10.1093-nutrit-nuac086.pdf https://oa.mg/pdf/10.1093-nutrit-nuac086.pdf

lr4444lr 4y ago

Still never gets old. As Juvenal said, it's hard not to write satire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG6Hrh4v08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG6Hrh4v08

Kukumber 4y ago

title: "honey consumption improves.." content: "honey consumption MAY improve" ".. when consumed within a healthy dietary pattern" let's share this article!

_0j9w 4y ago

This is why I exclusively drink Jack Daniel's tennessee honey whisky during work hours.

petergrace 4y ago

These results seem inconsistent with the current understanding that the majority of the sugar in honey comes from fructose, and as such can be very damaging to the liver (fructose is a major contributing factor for 'fatty liver disease.') 'Use in moderation' is a fine cover-your-butt, but how many people do you know who consume anything in moderation, especially in the USA?

adrian_b 4y ago
In moderate quantities, fructose cannot be harmful. Nevertheless, with easy access to concentrated forms, like sugar, but also honey and dried fruits, it has become possible to eat too much fructose per day, which is guaranteed to have bad health effects, like damaging the liver. The recommendation that I have seen is to eat up to 50 g/day of sugar, i.e. up to 25 g/day of fructose. When eating only fresh or defrosted fruits, it is easy to follow this, because the upper limit corresponds with around 500 g of most cultivated fruits or with around 300 g of the sweetest fruits, like grapes or fresh figs. On the other hand, a single chocolate may contain more than 60 g of sugar.

aritmo 4y ago

"Honey, especially robinia, clover, and unprocessed raw honey, may improve.." Scientific papers on the benefits of honey tend to be infomercials for the honey industry. How do you figure it out? If the suggested "good" honey is limited to a specific geographic region. The local honey industry can benefit from the positive exposure. They don't do these informecials if the honey can be obtained from all over the world. Where does the Robinia tree grow natively? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia

syrgian 4y ago
Doesn't "unprocessed raw honey" include all quality honey, anyway? My guess is that most processed raw honey is not as good (or even bad), but those (robinia and clover) might be better than the rest. Still, I would rather get unprocessed robinia/clover honey rather than their processed variants.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  According to the article, "processing" refers to heating. Most commercial honey has been pasteurized, which appears to destroy whatever substance exists in raw honey and has favorable effect on glycemia. Even using honey in a too hot drink or in a baked cake might eliminate most of the health effects of raw honey.

zzzeek 4y ago

I'm over "food X will lower your cholesterol" headlines. if you have a cholesterol problem, your options are: 1. cut saturated fats in the diet by at least 80% 2. take statins I do maybe 30% of option 1 and 80% of option 2 (low dose). As I get older, the effectiveness of the statins appears to decrease so I'd like to raise my dose but my doc is not on board yet. LDL cholesterol is no joke so I dont get the point of these "X might reduce your cholesterol a tiny amount if you have an amazing diet already", well great

sph 4y ago
To say LDL cholesterol is misunderstood is an understatement. I recommend this as a primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXKJaQeteE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXKJaQeteE0 tl;dw: there are many types of LDL which are not adequately represented in blood tests, unless subject to expensive centrifuges. LDL is how the body delivers fatty acids to be used as energy to the rest of the body, but in contact with high levels of sugar, becomes glycated, vulnerable to oxidation and stays in the bloodstream instead of being used or reabsorbed by the liver. Then it accumulates in the walls lining your arteries. So the take away is: do not eat tons of fat with tons of sugar if you care about your arteries. One or the other are not necessarily bad. Also statins are terrible with worse side effects. Fix your diet, not the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests.
- dabraham1248 4y ago
  > Also statins are terrible with worse side effects. Fix your diet, not the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests. Whether or not to take a statin is a _complicated_ decision, based on _many_ variables. Maybe statins didn't work out in your situation, but please don't suggest things like this. "Fix your diet" is _very_ difficult, as well as ambiguous (e.g. carnivores and vegans will both claim that their diet will save lives. Vegans have more actual data, carnivores are louder and more interested in pointing out possible mechanisms). The best research we have suggests that statins save a _lot_ of lives. _And_ that most of the "adverse reaction to statin" effects are statistically indistinguishable from people who aren't on statins. Heck, look at the "Adverse Effects" section of the wikipedia page. Cerivastatin _did_ raise the risk of muscle issues, some of them serious. But A) not by much, and B) it's been withdrawn for > 20 years. FWIW, I'm one of those people who eats "well", runs, lifts, meditates, used to drink white wine until the correlation was disproved,... and still had a cholesterol over 500. Until I started taking my current statin. That means I'm actually one of the comparatively few people on a statin who doesn't know that it reduces my risk (the mechanism of cholesterol regulation and/or production in me is different than in most people. We don't actually know whether statins lower my risk. We do know that statins lower my cholesterol, and that lowers risk for people with the more common mechanisms, so I'm playing the odds.). Re: side effects, I _think_ I had increased muscle soreness after lifting when I started on statins, but I googled, and that's also a thing that just happens to people around 40. Right now I'm 50, pulling more than twice what I weigh, and still running, so it can't be _that_ big an issue. It's not like I was a professional athlete until I started taking statins. Which is a sample size of 1, but that's backed up by the studies, so... > "not the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests" We know that lowering "the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood tests" correlates with lowering your risk of cardiovascular issues. So actually, yes, as a rule, lower the estimated amount of cholesterol in your blood test. Statins aren't the only way, but they do a lot of good for a lot of people. NB: I'm not affiliated with any statin producer, except that I take a statin daily. I'm also not a doctor, but I've had ridiculously high cholesterol since I was in utero, and have been trying to keep abreast of the research for about 30 years now.

cgartner 4y ago

bedast 4y ago

> However, the evidence for this effect in human studies has not been systematically evaluated and quantified. One thing I noticed in the paper is a lack of breakdown of results based on diabetic diagnosis. With almost half of participants being "healthy" and only 21% being "diabetic" (specifically not isolating Type 1 from Type 2 and not specifying other diabetic conditions), the results of whether this information is useful to a diabetic gets skewed. This is a harmful way to present this information because people will read into this that honey will help a diabetic. In fact, there's a comment to the linked article asking where a diabetic might find more information. To be clear: Type 1 and 3 diabetics will need to dose the same amount of insulin for the carbs as they would any other sugar. Type 2 diabetics and PCOS will see a similar spike based on the glycemic index and the amount consumed. LADA and MODY will need to do whatever they normally do. If you're having glucose control issues already, this is not going to be a remedy and should not be sought as one. If you do have good glucose control, this MIGHT be something to watch for more research. Otherwise, this should have no bearing on your diabetic treatment.

jablala 4y ago

Besides the question of the legitimacy of this post. I would encourage everyone to go and explore horrible practice of honey production. Along with the effects honey bees having on native species and wild bees. Which ties in to effective pollinators and why we hear about "rapid decreasing bee population".

durkie 4y ago
Could you be more specific? I kept bees for a decade and don't know what you're referring to.
darkwizard42 4y ago
I'm not sure I follow. What is the research you would recommend folks look at? I'm not clear on the conclusion you are coming to... is producing honey via bee farms bad for local environments??
- jmhobbs 4y ago
  The argument is that non-native honey bees (if you live in the US) put pressure on the native pollinators competing for the same food sources. It makes sense logically, since commercial producers will have huge bee yards and do migratory beekeeping to follow the pollination contracts and the honey flows. I have not, however, ever seen a study on it. I've also never really gone looking.

uptownfunk 4y ago

Honey has been consumed for hundreds if not thousands of years. In ancient medicinal systems it is given a special status as a conduit for herbs and medicines. Even the ancient rg vedic texts make special mention of honey. It is also used in ritualistic worship. Obviously none of that has to mean anything from a scientific lens, but it does seem interesting why it tends to pop up across history in interesting ways. Frankly I think it is also mentioned because it is edible and sweet and mildly intoxicating in large quantities and can also be made into mead

smm11 4y ago

Dangerous to say this, and quite likely very wrong. As is the belief that sugar does not drive high cholesterol.

twawaaay 4y ago

> Honey, especially robinia (also known as acacia honey, a honey from false acacia or black locust trees), clover, and unprocessed raw honey, may improve glycemic control and lipid levels when consumed within a healthy dietary pattern, (...) The key word here is "within a healthy dietary pattern". Unfortunately, most people in US are not on a healthy dietary pattern and have some level of insulin resistance which means any benefits would probably be smaller than added damage. Whoever is looking to improve their health I would urge to skip any notion sugary products are going to make them healthier until they are sure they got rid of their insulin resistance. (disclaimer: I am not a dietician or even doctor at all. Please, don't construe this as professional advice. I am just a geek who is spending a huge amount of time trying to separate actual information from overwhelming disinformation on anything related to dieting.)

liendolucas 4y ago

Basically any form of sugar is to put it in simple words a poison. As far as I understand every living organism produces glucose, which if I'm not mistaken is the fuel of life. So if human bodies already produce glucose there shouldn't be any need for anyone to ingest sugar in any of its forms. I have read many years ago a very a interesting book backed by scientific data about this topic but I can't remember the name of it.

TylerE 4y ago
Completely incorrect. Where do you think glucose comes from? Many processes in the body produce water. This does not obviate the need to drink.
- liendolucas 4y ago
  Maybe I made a mistake. What I meant is that when you ingest food the body processes it and one of the products is glucose. So you can completely put aside all sugar ingestion, that's what I wanted to say. You've said that everything I said is completely incorrect so it would be great if you can expand yourself why everything is so wrong.
- manmal 4y ago
  Partially correct. Gluconeogenesis produces sufficient glucose for (adult) humans to survive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis Edit: Added „adult“
casperc 4y ago
Well that settles it then…
adamdusty 4y ago
Any form of sugar? That includes essentially all fruits and most vegetables.

StreamBright 4y ago

It is not a surprise. Honey has a GI of 60.

osigurdson 4y ago

It is almost like these "studies" are sitting on a stack, ready for publication when there isn't a lot of interesting news. Coffee good, coffee bad. Wine good (in moderation), wine bad, eggs good, eggs bad, etc., etc. Delete.

ngoilapites 4y ago

Honey makes me smart, or so I feel. It awakens some interesting mental dynamics on myself. How? No other sugar does it, perhaps a bit maple juice.

recursive__ 4y ago

megamix 4y ago

Just thanks for sharing this!

Syzygies 4y ago

The "Honey Souk" in Morocco's Marakech medina sells the best and most diverse selection of honey I've ever seen. If I could travel one hour at a time, I'd go get Shirunashi Tantanmen ramen noodles at King-ken in Hiroshima, then go honey shopping at the Honey Souk in Marakech. This ramen is a reason to visit Hiroshima, it's that good. This honey is a reason to visit Marakech, it's that good. (Otherwise, if one visits one medina, it should be Fes.) There are too many people missing legs in Morocco from diabetes for me to easily accept this study.

rapatel0 4y ago

Nutrition studies are almost always shit and mainstream articles are 99% garbage. Error in Nutrition studies - People drop out -> introduces bias - human survey data is used -> people lie Journalists run the same stupid playbook - Watch XYZ journal for a new article - Read abstract and infer something - "almonds can lower BLANK and increase muscle mass" - Write article about how scientists say almonds are gonna change your life - (if bodybuilding) insert a workout optimized for almonds

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago

Natural sugar water raises blood sugar? No way!

ck2 4y ago

Best "fun-fact" about honey is it never spoils. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-behind-honeys-eternal-shelf-life-1218690/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-be...

11235813213455 4y ago

Fruits are quite better for us, because their fiber, ripe to fermented is better too

lxe 4y ago

I think meta analysis papers can be replaced with AI relatively soon.

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Jamesmoorez 4y ago

keepquestioning 4y ago

Is the sugar in Honey/Fruit better than the sugar in say, twinkies?