Honey: The Real Nutritional Benefits

The journey from bee to bottle begins with flower nectar. Honeybees collect the nectar and enzymes in bee saliva break down the sugar into glucose and fructose which is stored in honeycombs to feed the hive over the winter. In the honeycomb, excess water evaporates through constant fanning from the bee’s wings. The resulting thick, sticky liquid is what we know as honey.

The European Union’s largest honey yields are found in Spain, Germany, Romania, and Hungary. However, as successful honey production depends on the honey bee thriving, it is of concern that Europe is seeing a significant decline in bee colonies (21% in the winter 2016/2017 alone).

Honeybees not only produce honey but undertake an important role as crop pollinators. Given that 84% of the EU’s crops depend on pollination, the European Commission developed a strategy for honeybee health. Multiple factors contribute to the decline in bees; one of which may be pesticides, which prompted the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to issue guidance on assessing the potential risks of pesticides to bees and more recently work towards the development of a database to actively collect information on bee health in Europe. 

Nutritional value of honey

Season, environmental conditions, processing techniques and varieties of flower nectar can all influence the composition of honey but, essentially, the main nutritional constituents are carbohydrates (simple sugars: fructose and glucose). In addition to water, honey contains very small amounts of protein, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, enzymes, and polyphenols, including flavonoids from pollen, which can help identify the honey origin. Honey is typically a smooth liquid containing imperceptible tiny crystals. However, factors such as its origin, low storage temperature, longer storage time and higher glucose content, can all lead to crystallisation; larger crystals form and the texture becomes crunchy. The process can be momentarily reversed by gentle heating. However, heating and filtering of honey (to purify) may negatively affect its properties by for example darkening the colour, destroying enzymes, and removing health-beneficial anti-oxidants.

Benefits of honey

Honey has been used for millennia in traditional medicine for its potential antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties. Honey specifically prepared for medical use can be applied topically for wound dressings. Honey’s low moisture content, hydrogen peroxide, and acidity (average pH of 3.9) are inhospitable to bacteria and give honey its antibacterial properties. The anti-inflammatory properties are thought to be due to antioxidant substances, although the amounts in individual honey samples differ depending on honey origin, composition, and dose. Some evidence from an individual and small-scale cell, animal and human studies also suggest that honey may be beneficial in the treatment of coughs, belly and digestive upsets8. Finally, honey may contain spores of the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, which can cause serious infection in infants, leading to advice to avoid giving honey to children below 12 months of age. 

Overall, the evidence that honey has specific health effects in humans is severely limited, with large-scale studies in humans missing to underpin the current claims about its health-promoting properties.