Consuming honey may help improve blood glucose and lipid (cholesterol and triglyceride) levels, especially when that honey comes from a single floral source, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nutrition Reviews.
Sugary sweeteners like honey are widely regarded as unhealthy, even though there hasn’t been much research comparing health outcomes linked to consuming different sweeteners such as maple syrup, molasses, coconut sugar, date palm sugar, and regular white or brown sugar. People with diabetes, in particular, are often encouraged to eat less sugar — advice that is probably very good in general, but may gloss over the difference between sugary sweeteners. And there is plenty of evidence that sugar-sweetened beverages, in particular, are linked to worse health outcomes including diabetes, heart disease, and forms of cancer including liver cancer and colorectal cancer.
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For the latest analysis, researchers evaluated data from 18 studies that looked at the effect of honey consumption on health outcomes like blood glucose levels, body fat, blood lipid levels, and blood pressure. These studies included a total of 33 different comparisons — such as consuming honey compared with no sweetener, or compared with a different sweetener — and involved a total of 1,105 participants. To be included in the analysis, a study had to be randomized and controlled — meaning that participants were randomly assigned either to consume honey or to consume some other sweetener or no sweetener — and each intervention had to last for at least a week. Participants also had to follow generally healthy dietary patterns, and added sugars had to account for 10% or less of their total calories, as noted in a news release on the analysis from the University of Toronto. The median daily dose of honey that participants consumed was 40 grams, or about 2 tablespoons. The median study intervention period was about eight weeks.
Possible health benefits linked to honey
The researchers found that overall, honey consumption was linked to lower blood glucose by an average of 3.6 mg/dl, and to lower total cholesterol by an average of 3.2 mg/dl — both small reductions with a low certainty of evidence. Similar improvements were also seen when it came to LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad”) cholesterol and triglycerides. A small improvement of 1.3 mg/dl higher, on average, was seen for HDL (high-density lipoprotein, or “good”) cholesterol, with a high certainty of evidence. But when the researchers dug deeper into different types of honey — grouped by the type of flowers bees used to make it, and by processing methods — they found that certain honey types were linked to greater health benefits. In particular, robinia (acacia) honey, clover honey, and unprocessed raw honey were the most beneficial.
“These results are surprising, because honey is about 80 per cent sugar,” said article author Tauseef Khan, PhD, a research associate in nutritional sciences at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University or Toronto, in the news release. “But honey is also a complex composition of common and rare sugars, proteins, organic acids, and other bioactive compounds that very likely have health benefits.”
The researchers concluded that consuming honey in general — and specifically robinia, clover, or unprocessed raw honey — may help improve metabolic outcomes like blood glucose and lipid levels. But more studies with a focus on floral sources and processing methods of honey are needed, they wrote, to increase the certainty of this evidence for most health outcomes.
Want to learn more about managing blood glucose? See our “Blood Sugar Chart,” then read “What Is a Normal Blood Sugar Level?” and “Strike the Spike II: How to Manage High Blood Glucose After Meals.”
Want to learn more about diabetes and cholesterol? Read “Natural Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol,” “Your Cholesterol Questions Answered,” and “Statin Alternatives: Other Medications That Can Lower Cholesterol.”