Honey makes you fat: myth or reality?

Miel de lavanda de 500 g de Apícola Moreno

Nowadays, nutritionists are now blaming the overweight of people 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. Also, it is true that you must pay attention to its calories but it is sweeter than regular sugar. Consequently, you will need less honey to sweeten your dishes that with regular sugar. So, we will see which sweeter is the best option and if honey makes you fat.

Index of the article:

  1. Does honey make you fat if you take it
  2. Before going to bed?
  3. Honey or sugar in the diet
  4. Honey or saccharine
  5. Conclusion, honey is good
  6. Other sweeteners
  7. Scientific studies

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. Consequently, with honey you consume less calories. 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 directly going to stay as fat deposits in our body. That is, they are the ones that give us the extra kilos. It is important not to eat too much and also dinner should be eaten about two hours before going to bed.

Honey contains calories, and logically it makes you fat if you eat too much. However, our body needs energy and nutrients, which it gets from foods like honey and others. However, the point is to take food that gives us energy and provides us with all the nutrients our body needs. In this way, our body is satiated with our consumption, and so that we don’t take more food than our body needs.

For this reason, honey is a good alternative before going to bed. Honey is rich in nutrients, and with this we will get our body satiated and fed properly. When the body feels full and well fed, it will not ask for more food, and in this way we will be able to lose weight easily.

a) Always with a limit

We have to take everything in its right measure. Since you gorge yourselves on honey, of course you’ll put on a lot of weight, just like any other food. What will help us is to take some honey, which will sweeten our night and take away our hunger.

Therefore, a very good idea to end the day, is to take a teaspoon or two to sweeten some juice or small dessert. Consequently, we are not going to add hardly any calories, we are going to eat in a very healthy way and we will be satiated. In short, honey in adequate quantities, can help us to 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.

Caja para empresa con 8 variedades de miel

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 makes you fat. The body needs calories, which is what gives us energy. However, we need nutrients for our body to function properly, and that is what makes honey different from other sweeteners. Sugar only provides colories, and in the case of brown sugar it is almost the same, and the nutrients it provides are minimal. In the case of honey, besides providing us with calories, it 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 blamed for most of the health problems we suffer from (cardiovascular, degenerative and obesity problems). The main reason it that honey makes up sugar, that they are carbohydrates like the rest of sweeteners. However, the white sugar is a food that is refined and provides only calories and no nutrients. Even brown sugar, which has a bit more nutrients, but in a very low quantity. Therefore, brown and white sugars would be almost equal from a nutritional point of view.

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.

molecura of saccharin

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.

quote about bees

Photo 4: Quote about honeybees

4. Honey, the best sugar substitute

In summary, it is clear that as a calorific product, honey is fattening, but this will depend on the amount we take. Besides, it will always be much better than any type of sweetener. However, as we have seen in this article and in others we have in our blog, honey is good and worth taking every day.

Therefore, honey is a very complete and healthy food that sweetens our food in a natural way and as nature itself gives it to us. A food that we can take every day without any problem but without abuse.

Finally, these campaigns against sugar are temporary, and in a few years they will blame other foods. But this remains to be seen.

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.

Bote de miel de mil flores con DO La Alcarria

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:

The website health. Is sugar healthty? Honey makes you fat?

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