Honey: food, medicine or both?             

            Archeologists have evidence that humans have been gathering honey for about 8,000 years but it’s likely that some lucky Stone-Agers discovered it tens of thousands of years earlier. It remained our most common sweetener until the rise of the sugar industry only a couple of hundred years ago.

            Honey’s benefits tend to be exaggerated. It does have some nutrients that refined sugar obviously does not but these tend to be present in relatively small quantities. Few of us are likely to eat more than a teaspoon or so on any given day. It does contain some B vitamins – pardon the pun – but it also has a little vitamin C, calcium and iron. These and its other nutrients vary with the kinds of plants that bees have visited and the variation is considerable. Like most plant products honey contains hundreds of chemicals that include antioxidants and those that inhibit the growth of bacteria and other organisms. 

            Honey is, after all, mostly sugar. About 70 percent of it is made up of glucose and fructose, just like table sugar, or sucrose. Other natural sugars make up the rest.

            Throughout almost all recorded history honey has been valued for its medicinal properties, especially in the care of wounds and other skin problems. This ancient and universal belief does have a scientific basis. The high concentration of sugar inhibits the growth of most bacteria and certain chemicals in many kinds of honey also have some antibacterial properties. Several other substances are present in honey that have antiviral and antifungal properties.

In the past couple of decades there have been studies both in animals and humans in an effort to determine how honey works in wound healing and how it compares with other forms of wound care. The results have not always been positive but that may be partly due to the fact that some of the benefits vary with the source of the honey.

This quest has some urgency. As our population ages and the epidemic of type 2 diabetes continues to worsen there is a growing number of persons who are faced with skin ulcers and poor wound healing.

Honey is not entirely free of hazards. Infant botulism occurs when babies are fed honey contaminated with the spores of a bacterium that produces a deadly toxin. Children below the age of one year should never be given this otherwise very safe food.