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Does anyone else eat honey as part of their daily food intake?

 

I have been taking a couple of spoons of honey a few times a day and i put it into curries etc and always before bed after reading and listening to Sir Chris Hoy and his use of honey.

 

I am happy just with Tesco or Asda's honey at 93-99 pence a jar of the price of the stuff currently available at £1.30 a jar.

I never go for the more expensive stuff as basically i am tight.

 

Today i spotted this and thought no i would rather get a week or mores worth of fruit and veg in and a couple of jars of my usual. 

 

 

 

Edited 6 December, 20214 yr by roottoot

I may start doing this actually. Seems quite interesting!

I like it with peanut butter on toast (don't knock it if you ain't tried it), and of course on roast 'snips or gammon, but I'm far from a regular consumer.  My Mum insisted local honey would improve my resilience to hay fever, so I had it every day in my teens.  Didn't make diddly squat difference so far as I was concerned.

 

Gaz

 

 

I eat a lot of fruit, breakfast is always jumbo porridge oats with fruit salad (home made) and fromage blanc, I used to mash 1/2 a banana into the porridge with rock salt (my only salt intake of the day) to make it a bit sweeter and have used honey when I had no bananas.

 

Now I have discovered pate de dattes (date paste) which is very convenient, I use a lot less of it and never buy bananas now, a block of it lasts a couple of months. It does not need storing in the fridge and can be used anywhere that honey or sugar would be. Some people use it instead of sugar in their coffee or tea and Morrocan Pattiseries use it a lot, it's much healthier than processed sugar

 

Worth a try if you can find it.

The explanation seems very muddled.

 

"[Useful] Hormones are fuelled by fat, so we'll put glucose in instead" (paraphrasing a bit brutally).

 

My understanding of metabolism says that the body only 'runs on fat' when excess glucose isn't available in the bloodstream, so I don't see how adding it helps.

 

Not saying it doesn't work, just sounds a bit backwards, as explained there.

 

Edited 6 December, 20214 yr by Wino

I think you are right there.   The honey and what they were calling a hibernation diet might now be more along the lines of the Low-carb ketogenic diet some have which is high fat and low carb. 

3 hours ago, Gaz said:

Mum insisted local honey would improve my resilience to hay fever

In this context, when it's worked, local has meant "sufferer lives within about 4 miles of the hives" IME.

Big fan of honey myself ,but the problem with cheap honey is alot of it comes from china ,and its not allways just pure honey they dilute it with lots of sugar syrup ,best to buy british stuff as its not allowed over here and its alot nicer .

British honey is not allowed in Yorkshire 😲

 

Do you want someone to smuggle you some in? 😆

@Mickvrs220

Thanks for that.

Made me look. 

https://latinhoneyshop.com/blogs/news/11-shocking-facts-about-supermarket-honey

 

I will just stick with the stuff i like the taste of.  Not a honey fan so not going to have stuff that tastes horrible.

 

I get big jars as gifts from Hungary that are sold at the roadside and funnily it tastes & looks identical to the Tesco honey.

 

 

The Tesco jar has on it.

Tesco Clear Honey.Naturally Sweet.

Made naturally from flower nectar collected by bees.

A blend on non-EU Honeys. Packed in the UK. 

Edited 6 December, 20214 yr by roottoot

14 minutes ago, J.R. said:

British honey is not allowed in Yorkshire 😲

 

Do you want someone to smuggle you some in? 😆

Thanks for the offer jr but we have got a fair few honey bees in yorkshire ,they just have to be quick while the suns still shining😁

3 minutes ago, roottoot said:

@Mickvrs220

Thanks for that.

Made me look. 

https://latinhoneyshop.com/blogs/news/11-shocking-facts-about-supermarket-honey

 

I will just stick with the stuff i like the taste of.  Not a honey fan so not going to have stuff that tastes horrible.

 

I get big jars as gifts from Hungary that are sold as the roadside and funnily it tastes & looks identical to the Tesco honey.

 

 

The Tesco jar has on it.

Tesco Clear Honey.Naturally Sweet.

Made naturally from flower nectar collected by bees.

A blend on non-EU Honeys. Packed in the UK. 

Chances are its good stuff then george if its sold at roadside ,probs a local beekeeper 👍

@Mickvrs220  It is your 'buy British stuff as it is not allowed over here and its a lot nicer'  that is confusing.  Where is over here?

2 minutes ago, roottoot said:

@Mickvrs220  It is your 'buy British stuff as it is not allowed over here and its a lot nicer'  that is confusing.  Where is over here?

Britain haha ,i meant proper british honey is not diluted crap with no health benefits,but you do pay extra for it but if your putting in your body why not .

@Mickvrs220  I know what you meant on Buy British, just not the over here bit.

 

Plenty local Honey sold near to me in Angus and Deeside etc.  

Local bees honey for anyone local or not.   

 

Never sure how they can say Organic Honey..

15 minutes ago, roottoot said:

@Mickvrs220  I know what you meant on Buy British, just not the over here bit.

 

Plenty local Honey sold near to me in Angus and Deeside etc.  

Local bees honey for anyone local or not.   

 

Never sure how they can say Organic Honey..

No ive often wondered about the organic label ,maybe its from non farmed flowers 😁or perhaps so they can charge an extra 3 quid .

2 hours ago, roottoot said:

Never sure how they can say Organic Honey..

Soil Association "Organic" anything is is a marketing racket so they can charge rich eejits more for $product. I mean, when you get products marked as "Organic oxygen dihyride", which is emphatically 100% not an organic chemical...

honey is lovely. but...

if i eat it out of the jar, cold.. happy out. 

if however it is heated or cooked into anything i get an incredibly bad cough for a few hours. 

no explanation as to why..

 

funny story though, my SIL loves honey and only buys local to her honey (it does work for her sons' hayfever). she and her partner were at a really lovely hotel a couple of yrs ago. they went down for breakfast and there was a big slab of honeycomb out on the buffet, and you literally scraped your own into a little bowl. she was over the moon. 

on the second morning she asked one of the staff where they were getting it as it was clearly local, and shed love to get some.  they went to check and came back from the kitchens, looked under the serving counter and pulled out  a box. inside the box was another vac packed honeycomb. fair enough for transport. and the teenage staffer  says "Im not sure exactly where it comes from, but the shipping label has tokyo written on it". 

Sister in Law was gutted

 

Edited 6 December, 20214 yr by mac11irl

41 minutes ago, mac11irl said:

"Im not sure exactly where it comes from, but the shipping label has tokyo written on it".

😹

Local (Australian) apiarists have long suspected that cheap imported Chinese honey was manufactured but it took some sophisticated scientific analysis to officially confirm it about 8 months ago.

Honey is naturally produced when the forager bees return collected nectar to house bees who process it in their crop from sucrose to simpler glucose and fructose sugars. The Chines must have copied the process artificially and to be fair it fooled a lot people.

 

Luckily Australian labelling laws mean that if the honey is labelled as produced here and from 100% Australian content then it is unlikely to be contaminated.

 

Manuka is the New Zealand name for the Ti-tree plant common here and in New Zealand. Oils from the Ti-tree plant are used in a lot of being anti-bacterial and soothing medications, I swear by a particular Ti-tree based lotion for sunburn. The claim is that some of those medicinal qualities are transferred to the honey produced from the flowering plant. There is a lot of marketing faff and some fairly exaggerated claims for it which do not stand up real well to properly conducted independent scientific studies.

 

A very interesting honey is produced by a particular stingless Australian honey bee ( I cannot remember the name but there are 11 variesties here). A very small bee it does not produce much honey but it is high in fructose and phenols that is being investigated because it is effective against antibiotic resistant bacteria. It was long valued for it medicinal qualities, taste and, I presume, ease of collection by aboriginals, hey a 40,000+ year old culture must count for something.

 

Personally I agree with @Wino and  I'd take the claims of Hoy and associates with a pinch of salt, or teaspoon of honey, whatever your preference. I'll remain sceptical until independently proven. I get to meet a lot of elite athletes and I'll just say that some of the (legal) supplements they consume in the search for better performance depend more on marketing and hearsay than real proven fact. Simply eating a calorie balanced diet of  unprocessed and unrefined foods can give a person all the nutrition they need.

 

We have got a beehive in the garden and enjoy eating our own honey. It seems to have slightly more subtle taste complexities than commercially produced varieties but I'm prepared to admit that most of the satisfaction is that it is home produced. I do not expect any health giving qualities from its consumption, bonus if there is.

 

 

As long as taking it before bed does no harm even to a type 2 diabetic then and their blood sugar levels are under control.

Even if it is just Super Market Honey and maybe no different from taking a couple of sweets or pieces of chocolate.

 

If it is only snake oil and a fad being promoted by sellers of honey then so be it.

 

https://mindbodygreen.com/articles/why-you-should-eat-a-spoonful-of-honey-before-bed

 

https://brightside.me/insperation-health/what-can-happen-to-your-body-if-you-start-eating-honey-before-bed-682360

 

Edited 7 December, 20214 yr by roottoot

Carbs don't get any more complicated than the number of saccharide molecules they're made up from. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose are all single molecule sugars and therefore very easy and quick for the gut to absorb; that's the whole issue about Glycaemic index - the speed at which something can be absorbed means it hits your blood stream quicker but then leaves your blood stream quicker and is converted to fat. Lower GI carb sources are either disaccharides (2 saccharides), oligosoccharides (3-6 ) or polysaccharides (greater than 7 saccharides) which are progressively more complex in structure and need to take time to break down.

 

This diet doesn't make much sense where honey is used - you could do the same with Haribo, Wine gums, Fruit - anything that's made up of simple sugars. in fact, nutritionists would likely all advise not going to bed hungry as they are correct that sleep can be quite energy-intensive. Honey is seen as healthy but its no more natural than sugar cane - it doesn't get refined to within an inch of its life though and with all foods, the real evil is in the refining processes.

 

As for Chris hoy endorsing it - it means he's heard it and doesn't disagree. I doubt anyone can remember the last time he needed to lose bodyfat (and I mean properly lose bodyfat, not the marginal pre-season toning that goes on in pro sports) so I can't see him having leant on the diet enough to swear by it without a payment being made somewhere along the line. He will have been coached and advised on nutrition in far too much depth to start being able to nail 'those 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar before bed' being the clincher to save the world's fattening population.

 

Manuka Honey has an extract called Propolis I think which has supposedly been isolated as being the thing able to bolster your immune system but I think it's just another claim with insufficient science to back-up. Doesn't make it BS, there just isn't a reliable quantity of data to draw meaningful reliable scientific conclusions. Certainly not enough to justify the price tag. BUT - people will go with what they believe and live and let live on that one.

 

Key take-aways from this:

1. Carbs are not inherently evil; we all need carbs for bodily functions to work properly and starving ourselves of that is not the way to live healthily (but that justifies brown rice/wholemeal pasta, not chip shops chips). 

2. Sports recovery fuel is stated as a ratio of 4:1 carbs to protein i.e. for every gram of protein, you should be taking 4g of carbs. They both give approximately 4 calories per gram, so a classic after a workout would be 25 grams of protein, 100g of carbs, giving you 500 calories. Baked beans on brown toast is meant to be pretty good (don't give me that 'full of sugar' nonsense, that's part of the point)

3. Go for food with the least additives and processing if possible - 

4. The saccharide complexity is key as is timing - doing a workout, get simple sugars in. I've done plenty of rides with a bag of jelly babies in the jersey pocket - couple of those every 5/10 mins is fine.

5. Celebrity endorsements are worth the bung, not the paper they're printed on. 

 

Did Chris Hoy endorse it?  The article says it is endorsed by Chris Hoy.

I have no idea if Chris Hoy approved of his name being used in an article about a book or if he gave any endorsement or received any reward from a book an article or the sale of honey.

I am not a celebrity so i will just give the endorsement that i will keep doing as i do and feel great on it. 

It works for me as a type 2 diabetic and not to lose bodyfat, just take something easy and have a good sleep and recovery from cycling.

No sweeties needing bought or having about because i would pig out on them, i have nothing in my home that i particularly like as i am a greedy person and i like just ignoring sweeties and treats. 

On bike rides and trips i have rough oatcakes with me and water.

 

The beans, toast etc are eaten at meal times and not before going to bed. 

 

Mike McInnes.

https://sethroberts.net/2014/01/02/interview-with-mike-mcinnes-author-of-the-honey-diet

 

Stuart McInnes.

https://raceid.com/en/articles/111

http://linkedin.com/in/stuartmcinnes1/?originalSubdomain=se

 

Maggie Stanfield.

https://irishnews.com/lifestyle/2017/04/24/news/maggie-a-pioneer-in-battle-against-diabetes-1003306/

 

 

I have not read the book.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 13 May, 20224 yr by roottoot

If it works for you go for it; and completely respect what you do and don't choose to eat on rides or have around the house; I'm the same with snacking on junk. And honey is a naturally occuring by-product which should avoid a fair amount of processing, China aside. It's not a magic elixir.

 

As a formulated recognised "diet" - doing a quick internet search reveals nothing that makes me think its got any particular substance over anything else. A dozen articles bordering on clickbaity straplines e.g. "can help you lose weight" (compared to what, doing nothing? eating pies?). Everything seems to be getting on for 10 years ago, which says to me there's been no buzz (pardon the pun) since then. 

 

Not sure what you meant about Chris Hoy - article up top says "it is said to be endorsed by Olympic gold-medal winning cyclist". That's vague as it is (said by whom?) but either way it's there to lend credibility and therefore improve sales.

 

Example to back-up my point:

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/mike-mcinnes/eat-sleep-and-slim-with-honey/9781444775921/

"Scientifically-backed" - according to who? (aside from the Daily Mail)

"Honey has always been regarded as a food with almost magical, health-giving and healing properties" - No it hasn't

"Just a spoonful of honey is all it takes to lose weight according to the sweetest, easiest diet - fall asleep and the weight will fall off" - a s reviewing statement on a website selling the book, this is borderline criminal.

 

To make bold claims, you need a mountain of evidence. This lot above is tripe designed to bolster sales.

 

Seriously, if it's working for you and you feel better for it, I'm genuinely supportive for you; but without proper data proving this as an isolated variable, it shouldn't be marketed as it is being. 

 

The authors of the book can answer for what they say and plenty will say they are selling 2 books that are not worth the paper they are written on.

Maybe they believe in what they wrote enough to not care what anyone that thinks it is all rubbish says.

It is like anything that does not actually harm anyone other than they wasted money buying a book, just cash down the drain.

 

I am starting a new medical research programme as a volunteer which is over 3 years and about diabetes and the heart and changes in diabetics.

So lots and lots of tests and scans and monitoring of food and exercise and medication and a lot of chance for discussion on these with doctors and dietitions.

 

The last research i was on for 12 months was for a drug that ended up with me having a weight loss that meant my diabetic medication was reduced and still is now.

When the trial ended and the medication was not available with the NHS in Scotland i really piled the weight on and had to restart the old medication even though me eating and exercise stayed the same. 

That was a real issue for a good while as i had my artificial leg altered / reduced while losing weight / bulk and then had back issues.

 

Once i finally got the new medication prescribed the difference was amazing in a matter of just weeks.

I was really peed off when it turned out there was a version of the medication i could have been on as soon as the trial finished as it was already approved and in use.

Re Pee,

i need to drink quite a lot of water to be sure of not having one of the not nice problems with this medication.

The other thing is i have to watch for low blood sugar levels / hypoglycaemia so carrying sweets would be sensible but i have some dextrose stashed tablets but have never needed to break them out.

http://www.nhs.uk/medicines/empagliflozin/

 

Jaradiance.

https://ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/jardiance

It is supposedly for use as an add on when blood sugars are out of control or where someone can not take Metaformin.

I have it now with a reduced dosage and all is well. 

 

So i will stick with the food intake i have for years now and try to stay pain free and injury free. 

 

The main thing i aim for is only needing 1 poo a day and that as early as possible in a day. 

Edited 13 May, 20224 yr by roottoot