Honey makes you fat: myth or reality?

Nowadays, nutritionists are now blaming people’s overweight on sugars. However, bee honey  is a natural product made up mainly of fructose and glucose, two types of sugar. Furthermore, high quality honey contains nutrients, such as antioxidants, enzymes and minerals that provide us health benefits. While it’s true that you must pay attention to its calories, honey is sweeter than regular sugar. Consequently, you will need less honey to sweeten your dishes compared to regular sugar. So, let’s see which sweetener is the best option and if honey contributes to weight gain.

Summary: Honey provides a lot of nutrients but it is not a free-calories product. Exactly, honey contains more calories than other sweeteners but it is sweeter than other sweeteners. Then, less honey is needed to achieve the same sweetness in your dishes. As such, using honey reduces the amount of calories you consume. Furthermore, in our shop in Las Rozas de Madrid we offer a fantastic selection of raws honeys; orange blossom, heather, lavender, eucalyptus,, rosemary, manuka and thyme honeys.

Other articles of interest: Where to buy raw honey? Are olives fattening, myth or reality? How nutritionists see oil, honey and calories.

1. Is honey fattening if we take it before going to bed?

The calories we consume before going to bed, especially if we have a late dinner, are more likely to be stored as fat in our bodies. These calories contribute to weight gain. It’s important not to eat too much and to have dinner about two hours before going to bed.

Honey contains calories, and logically it can cause weight gain if consumed in excess. However, our bodies need energy and nutrients, which we get from foods like honey. The key is to consume foods that provide energy and the necessary nutrients for our bodies. This way, our bodies feel satiated, and we avoid overeating.

For this reason, honey can be a good option before going to bed. Honey is rich in nutrients, helping us feel full and properly nourished. When the body feels full and well-fed, it won’t crave more food, making it easier to manage weight.

a) Always with a limit

We have to consume everything in moderation. If you gorge yourselves on honey, of course, you’ll put on a lot of weight, just like with any other food. What will help us is to take a small amount of honey, which will sweeten our night and satisfy our hunger.

Therefore, a very good idea to end the day is to take a teaspoon or two to sweeten some juice or a small dessert. This way, we will hardly add any calories, eat in a healthy way, and feel satiated. In short, honey in adequate quantities can help us lose weight. Of course, honey in large quantities will make us gain weight, like any other food taken in excess.

Photo 1: Flat stomach of a woman

b) It’s not just the calories

The advance of science has called into question the diets that count calories. It is not by consuming fewer calories that you will lose weight. These are the conclusions nutritionists are now reaching. A balanced, nutrient-rich diet is more important for weight loss than a low-calorie diet. Because not all colories are the same.

New research is showing that low-calorie diets are not leading to weight loss. It seems that a balanced diet is paramount, and from here, a lasting weight loss can be achieved.

c) A few tricks with honey to lose weight

Also, to lose weight, we can use some tricks like the following:

• Infusion sweetened with honey

I usually prepare an infusion sweetened with honey. I usually use rosemary honey, as it has relaxing properties and acts as a sleeping pill. This infusion helps me to relax and reduce the anxiety I have when I get home. In my case, honey is not fattening, on the contrary, it helps me to lose weight.

Photo 2: Box with different honeys

2. Honey or sugar in the diet. It makes you fat, true oder false?

Every food product that the human body digests will provide us with calories and can contribute to weight gain. The body needs calories because they provide us with energy. However, we also need nutrients for our body to function properly, and that is what makes honey different from other sweeteners. Sugar only provides calories, and in the case of brown sugar, it is almost the same, with minimal nutrients. In contrast, honey not only provides calories but also contains a large amount of nutrients, vitamins, and antioxidants.

Exactly honey has 304 calories per 100 g, compared to sugar which has 387, honey is less calorific. At the same time, honey is about 1.5 times more sweetening than sugar, so if we want to sweeten some product, honey will sweeten it with less quantity. Therefore, by using less product and having less calories, it will help us to lose weight.

Honey is made up of different sugars; mainly fructose and glucose mainly. However, it has a lesser extent sucrose maltose and other sugars, minerals; calcium, cobra, magnesium, iron, manganese and zinc; vitamins B, C, D and E; enzymes from the stomach of bees and other organic compounds: acetic acid, citric acid, etc.

a) Slimming low-calorie diets

Nowadays, honey as a sweetener is often blamed for many of the health problems we suffer from, such as cardiovascular, degenerative, and obesity issues. The main reason is that honey contains sugar, which, like other sweeteners, consists of carbohydrates. However, white sugar is a refined food that provides only calories and no nutrients. Even brown sugar, which has slightly more nutrients, contains them in very low quantities. Therefore, from a nutritional point of view, brown and white sugars are almost equal..

Basing the diet only on calories causes imbalances in our health, eventually leading to the development of a disease. From the point of view of our ideal weight, if we consume large amounts of calories without any nutrients, our body will be asking us to eat more food until we satisfy the level of nutrients despite filling our stomach. We will eat much more than we consume, as a consequence, our body will gain weight.

A balanced diet rich in nutrients will satisfy our vital needs with adequate intakes. This, together with stress management and exercise, will enable us to maintain or reach our ideal weight.

Photo 3: Saccharin formula

3. Honey or saccharin

Saccharin is a compound obtained from toluene and other petroleum products.

With this definition of saccharin, it is clear that the natural, health and nutritional supremacy of honey is paramount. Honey is a completely natural product without manipulation against saccharin, a product derived from petroleum. We call this product, because you can’t call it food.

It is clear that honey makes you fat, but unlike saccharin and sugar, honey gives you plenty of nutrients, such as enzymes, minerals and antioxidants. If you don’t want honey to make you fat, the best way is to reduce its consumption.

Photo 4: Quote about honeybees

4. Honey, the best sugar substitute

In summary, it is clear that honey, as a calorie-dense product, can contribute to weight gain, but this depends on the amount we consume. Nevertheless, honey is always a much better option compared to any type of artificial sweetener. As we have seen in this article and others on our blog, honey is beneficial and worth consuming daily.

Therefore, honey is a highly nutritious and wholesome food that naturally sweetens our meals as nature intended. It’s a food we can enjoy daily without any issues, as long as it’s consumed in moderation.

Finally, these anti-sugar campaigns may be temporary, and in the future, other foods might be blamed. Only time will tell.

5. Other sweeteners

Finally, there are other natural sweeteners on the market that we can use, such as

• Stevia
• Sugar
• Coconut Sugar
• Molasses
• Others

Honey is not the only natural sweetener. In nature we have other sweeteners that are also healthy. However, in this article we have mainly compared honey with sugar.

Photo 4: Thousand Flower Honey from La Alcarria

6. Scientific studies

In a study published by the scientific journal “Nutrition Research”, the effect of honey and sugar on weight gain in rats was studied. This study showed that rats that consumed honey ate less food than those fed sugar. The rats fed honey also gained less weight than those fed sugar.

Another study published by The Scientific World Journal shows that honey helps with weight loss. Also, another study published by The Journal of the American College of Nutrition compared the effects of sugar and honey, and found that women who consumed honey had lower blood sugars.

Sources:

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