Can Raw Honey Be Useful for Weight Loss
Nearly 45 million Americans go on a diet to lose added weight every single year. Weight loss is a grueling process that can mentally and physically exhaust nearly anyone, so any help is absolutely welcome when it comes to shedding those extra pounds.
Can a substance as sweet as raw honey, though, really be used for weight loss purposes? Absolutely. Packed with exactly what your body needs to shed those extra pounds, raw honey for weight loss is a great idea.
How to Use Raw Honey for Weight Loss
If you’re considering using honey to help you lose weight, it’s as simple as mixing a teaspoon of it into your daily cup of tea or coffee. You could also use it as a substitute for traditional sugar in dessert or instead of other syrups when you eat. Many also choose to simply take a teaspoon of honey at bedtime, as it can help your body burn additional fat while you’re sleeping.
Why Raw Honey Works
Honey works to improve your ability to lose weight on a number of levels. When most people think of honey, they think of the sugar it contains. The reality, though, is that when you compare honey with traditional refined sugar, honey isn’t empty calories. Instead, it’s packed with vitamins and minerals that help support your overall weight loss efforts.
Study after study has shown that those who eat foods high in fructose burn additional fat and increase their stamina because it pushes your liver to produce glucose, which signals that your body has plenty of fuel. That means your brain releases the fat-burning hormones you need and lets your body know that you don’t need to eat anything else.
Honey also has a fairly low GI value, so it doesn’t have the ability to raise your blood sugar level quite as quickly as sugar does. Even a little bit will satisfy your need for sweets without doing any serious harm to your body, and that’s great both for those looking to manage their weight and for those who wish to manage their diabetes as well.
Isn’t Honey High in Calories?
Honey has 64 calories and 17 grams of sugar per tablespoon. It also includes fructose, glucose, maltose, and sucrose. It’s considered a complex carbohydrate, which takes quite a bit longer for your body to digest. It’s more than just sugar that’s high in calories. It’s added nutritional value your body desperately needs while it’s working to lose weight.
Can Raw Honey Help Me Lose Weight?
If you’re already doing the things you should be – eating well and working out regularly – raw honey is an excellent addition to help support your journey toward weight loss. Remember, though, not all honey is raw honey, and the stuff on the grocery store shelf isn’t going to offer you the weight loss benefits you want.
Once the honey has been heated and pasteurized, a process that typically takes place before it’s shipped to your local grocery store, it loses many of the added nutritional benefits, which means it’s no more helpful to your weight loss efforts than traditional sugar. Ensure you get raw honey if you’re working to enhance your weight loss efforts.
No Bake Pumpkin Spice and Chia Energy Bites
Servings 15
Ingredients:
- 1 cup rolled oats
- ½ cup nut butter 9you can substitute it to sunflower butter or tahini)
- 3 tbsp creamed honey
- 2 tbsp desiccated coconut flakes
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- ½ tsp pumpkin spice
Instructions:
- Mix the oats, nut butter, coconut, chia seeds, and pumpkin spice together in a bowl until fully combined
- Roll the mixture into equal size balls. Place the bites in the fridge to firm up.
- You can decorate it with melted chocolate and coconut flakes
- Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days
Honey Hemp Heart Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Balls Recipe
Honey Hemp Heart Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Balls Recipe Makes 20 Servings
Ingredients:
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- ½ cup almond butter
- ½ cup hemp hearts
- 1/3 cup cacao honey
- 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Oatmeal Balls With Honey Recipe Instructions:
- Combine oats, almond butter, hemp hearts, honey, vanilla, and chocolate chips in a bowl. Mix well.
- Cover and chill the dough mixture in the refrigerator for 30 minutes
- Remove from the refrigerator and form small balls (about 1-2 tbs per ball).
- Store refrigerated in an airtight container for up to one week
Notes
- You can substitute other all-natural butter, sunflower butter, or tahini
- If you have difficulty getting the mixture to stick together after the mixture has chilled, try adding small increments of warm water, one tsp at a time.
5 Raw Honey Nutrition Facts
Raw Honey Nutrition Facts
If you’ve done any reading about raw honey in recent years, it may seem like one of the most powerful health foods available today. The truth is that it really is! Despite that fact, though, it remains a source of concentrated sugar, and while it’s a great way to compliment your current healthy diet, it’s not a food that you’ll want to overuse because of the amount of sugar that’s in it. What do you need to know about raw honey nutrition before you make it a regular part of your diet?
Understanding What Nutrients are In Raw Honey
Before you decide raw honey is the right addition to your diet, it may help to learn more about the nutritional facts that surround it. Here are five key facts you’ll want to consider.
There are Two Sugars Inside / Carbs In Honey:
Each tablespoon of honey you consume comes with 64 calories. Those calories come from the carbohydrates inside, which are primarily sugars. With honey, you’re getting about half of those from glucose and the other half comes from fructose.
It Has a Lower GI Than Sugar:
The glycemic index is a way to measure how fast your blood sugar level rises after you digest and absorb a certain food. This measurement ranks food on a scale of zero to 100, and foods with a high GI are digested and absorbed incredibly quickly, which pushes your blood sugar up fast.
Foods with a lower GI, though, are absorbed in a much slower rate, and that means that while your blood sugar does go up, it doesn’t go up as quickly. The GI for raw honey is just 58, depending on what type you buy. Contrast that with the GI for table sugar, which is 65, and you have a natural sweetener that you’ll actually want to add to your food.
It’s Fat-Free:
Honey is actually a fat-free food. A small amount of fat is a must in a healthy, balanced diet. The body can’t actually make essential fatty acids, which help it absorb things like vitamin A, vitamin D, and vitamin E.
You likely get the needed fat, though, from a variety of sources in your diet, which means you don’t need a lot of extra fat in your day. However, raw honey is a fat-free food, so you can use it without worrying about throwing off your commitment to a low-fat lifestyle.
It Adds Protein:
Your body needs plenty of protein if you’re going to remain healthy. In fact, there are more than 10,000 different types of protein found throughout your body. It’s in your organs, your muscles, and even your skin and hair.
Without enough protein, your body won’t have the energy you need to do the most important jobs like carrying oxygen to the different parts of your body. Honey actually contains some protein, and while it’s not enough to ensure your body can effectively do its job, it is a good addition to your overall protein intake.
It’s Packed with Vitamins and Minerals:
Vitamins and minerals help to boost your immune system and help your cells do their jobs. There are many vitamins and minerals packed inside honey, including B vitamins, zinc, copper, and calcium, just to name a few. It’s important to note that the content of the vitamins and minerals depends a bit on where the bees live and how the raw honey is actually processed.
In general, the darker the honey, the more the minerals.
The Power of Raw Honey
Raw honey is clearly an excellent source of nutrition, but it’s important to note that raw honey likely isn’t available on standard grocery store shelves. Raw honey comes directly from the hive.
Typically it’s not processed at all, which means it’s neither heated nor pasteurized. That’s important because that process can destroy key nutrients. More than that, though, the best raw honey options aren’t filtered either, which may make it look a bit different than what you might get off the grocery store shelves, but that difference is key to its nutritional power.
Pitaya Energy Balls
Pitaya Energy Balls Recipe
Servings 20
Ingredients:
- ½ cup dates
- ½ cup creamed honey
- 1 cup cashew nuts
- ½ cup oat flakes
- ¼ cup almond flour
- ¼ tsp vanilla powder
- ¼ tsp Ceylon cinnamon powder
- 3 tsp pitaya powder (Terrasoul organics brand)
- 1 tsp hemp protein powder (Terrasoul organics brand)
- A pinch of salt
Instructions:
Mix together all the ingredients in a blender until creamy. With slightly damp hands roll into balls and sprinkle some pitaya powder on top. Enjoy!
10 Raw Honey Health Benefits
Nearly 8,000 years ago, honey harvesting was already a key practice. Cave paintings just outside Valencia show an individual working to gather honey from the bees. Humans and honey share a history predating many other foods, including farmed fruits, vegetables, and grains, and even domesticated animals.
Raw honey would have been one of the sweetest treats available to early man, and it would go on to become part of folk remedies, early medicine, and much more. In fact, even today, raw honey holds a place of power for many people in their lives, and with good reason. It means amazing benefits.
Toward a Definition
It’s important to understand that raw honey isn’t what you might purchase from a grocery store shelf. Instead, it’s the pure stuff that bees make as they gather nectar from the flowers around them.
Raw honey is usually unfiltered and unpasteurized, which means that it hasn’t been through the heating process that kills many of the benefits that come from this valuable substance. Instead, the nutritional power of the honey remains intact, ready to work for you. What can raw honey do when you begin to consume it regularly? Take a look.
The Healthy Raw Honey Benefits You’ve Missed
Raw honey has long been a powerful option for many, and one quick glance at its biggest benefits and you’ll quickly realize why.
Offers More Antioxidants:
You’ve likely read quite a bit about antioxidants in recent months. Everyone has free radicals inside their body, but they can be quite dangerous if the levels become too high. They have continually been shown to be higher in those who suffer from ongoing health conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
While your body has antioxidants to fight those excess free radicals, supplementing those is a way to maintain the right balance. Raw honey is a good way to do just that. In fact, some types contain as many antioxidants as fruits and vegetables do, and that can help protect the cells in your body from any damage the free radicals might cause.
In turn, that could keep you healthier and prevent chronic disease issues. In fact, one study found that the antioxidant polyphenol, which is found inside every bottle of raw honey, can actually play a role in the prevention of heart disease.
Fights Bacteria and Fungus:
Another one of the many raw honey benefits you might discover is the fact that it has been known to have both antibacterial and antifungal properties. Research shows that raw honey has hydrogen peroxide inside naturally.
Hydrogen peroxide works as an antiseptic, which can help kill unwanted bacteria or fungus on or in your body. Honey works in another way to fight bacteria and fungus, though. It also helps keep wounds moist and creates a protective barrier thanks to its high level of viscosity, which essentially seals out infection.
Promotes Healing:
Along with the fact that raw honey has the power to kill bacteria and fungus that could create a further infection in wounds comes the fact that it actually promotes healing. Over the past several years, researchers have found that raw honey has the ability to boost healing time on wounds because it can help regenerate the tissue that has been injured. It has even been shown to create pain relief in seriously injured burn patients because it helps to decrease inflammation.
Provides a Good Source of Phytonutrients:
Plants contain thousands of chemicals that help protect them as they grow, and phytonutrients are one of them. While there are many different kinds of phytonutrients, one of the largest groups is flavonoids.
Research has found, though, that finding the right source of phytonutrients like flavonoids to add to your diet can help to enhance your body’s own processes and keep it working well. Raw honey contains flavonoids. In fact, it’s one of the two major bioactive molecules packed inside, and that means it could be useful in keeping your body incredibly healthy.
Acts as a Digestion Aid:
Having stomach issues? You’re not alone. Every year, 62 million Americans are diagnosed with serious digestive issues, and honey has been shown to treat many problems. It has long been known as a prebiotic, which means that it actually builds the good bacteria that already live in your intestines.
Prebiotics work a bit like a fertilizer in that they ensure the good bacteria have the ability to grow in your digestive system. Raw honey is a great source of prebiotics, which can help prevent digestive problems if you’re already suffering from them. It can also help you deal with them, though, after you already have a problem.
In fact, studies have shown it’s even been shown to be an effective treatment for Helicobacter pylori, which is one of the most common causes of stomach ulcers today.
Fights Cold and Flu Symptoms:
Not only can raw honey help you stay healthy, but should you struggle with common problems like the cold and flu, honey can help. You may even be already using it! If you’ve ever added honey to your hot tea when you have a cold, you’re likely doing it because it makes you feel better.
It’s an age-old sore throat remedy, and it can also function as a natural cough suppressant. In fact, some studies have shown that it’s just as effective as ingredients in over-the-counter cough medications when you swallow one or two spoonfulls.
Works as an Excellent Vitamin and Mineral Enhancer:
One tablespoon of raw honey means access to lots of different vitamins and minerals you may already be supplementing through other means. When you start consuming raw honey, you begin to enhance the amount of niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, calcium, magnesium, manganese, potassium, phosphorus, and zinc in your body. All of those are key to keeping you healthy.
Improves Memory:
The memory-related section of your brain is subject to an incredible amount of stress, not just from the world around you but also from problems like air pollution and much more. Raw honey, though, has the power to reduce that stress by actually reducing inflammation in your brain. This means that it could offer real enhancement in your ability to remember more and move forward in today’s ever more complicated world at a faster pace.
Assists in Weight Management:
More than one-third of people in the United States today are obese, and that means thousands are continually looking for a way to better manage their weight. Many studies have found that replacing sugar with raw honey helps to lower blood sugar, triglycerides and even suppress appetite.
A small University of Wyoming study found that appetite responses were measured in both women who ate honey with breakfast and those who ate sugar, and they found that honey could actually protect women from overeating thanks to the glycemic response triggered in the body after consumption.
Offers Allergy Relief:
More than 60 million people a year suffer allergy symptoms throughout the spring and fall, but raw honey can actually offer some relief for those allergies. Raw honey is packed with bee pollen. As the bees nearby go from flower to flower, they collect pollen from each, just a tiny bit.
When you eat the raw honey, you also eat that tiny bit of pollen that gives you so many allergy symptoms. Over time, consuming raw honey with that same pollen in it can help you experience fewer allergy symptoms because your body actually develops a more reasonable response to it as it gets desensitized to the pollen itself.
Raw honey offers amazing health benefits, but it’s important to note that it is still a source of sugar. As a result, if you suffer from a condition like diabetes where sugar levels must be carefully monitored, check with your doctor before you begin adding raw honey to your diet. Additionally, children under one should never consume raw honey.
If you’re ready to experience the benefits of raw honey in a way you never thought possible, try Sunny Honey! Pure, raw, and wholly unfiltered, it’s an amazing opportunity your body will absolutely love, thanks to the fantastic health benefits.
Raw Honey For Allergies
Raw Honey For Allergies
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard that there are many different benefits of eating raw honey. Maybe one of the best benefits, though, applies only to allergy sufferers. Raw honey for allergies is an excellent way to reduce your allergic symptoms during your worst allergy seasons, but it only works if you take it over time.
Which Allergies Can Be Treated with Raw Honey?
Research shows that raw honey really only works well with pollen allergies. While some current studies are underway to determine whether it helps people with other sensitivities, the simple truth is that because you’re only exposing your body to the pollen that bees gather, it seems that honey can really only treat those kinds of allergies best.
However, those studies may eventually find that raw honey can help treat a variety of kinds of allergies. However, it certainly can treat many allergy symptoms from a variety of sources like sore throat and coughing.
How Does It Work?
Understanding why raw honey works to treat allergy symptoms may help to understand exactly how honey is made. Raw honey comes from the bees you might see in your yard. The bees leave the hive, then gather pollen from local flowers. That’s actually the same pollen that causes your allergy symptoms.
From there, the bees take the pollen back to the hive and begin to process it. Later, a beekeeper takes the honey the bees have processed, lightly filters it to remove things like chunks of beeswax and dead bees, then jars it for your consumption. Raw honey is never heated or heavily filtered, and this is why it works so well for allergy sufferers.
Many scientists believe that the key to treating allergies is to slowly build up a better response to the pollens that cause allergies over time. Because raw honey actually contains a tiny bit of that pollen inside, allergy sufferers who eat a bit of raw honey each day are taking in tiny amounts of pollen to help expose their bodies to the allergens around them. Then they begin to acclimate to the pollen slowly and don’t have such a terrible reaction during allergy season.
It’s important to note that this only works with local raw honey. If the honey you’re consuming was not produced in your local area, you’re not going to get the same exposure to pollen that you might with local raw honey.
This theory of how honey might work is actually a fairly accepted one within the medical community. In fact, it’s the one that backs allergy shots today. Allergy shots contain increasingly larger doses of the substances to which a person is allergic.
As they continue to build up a tolerance to that substance in the shot, their symptoms decrease. This is true for honey, too. As you build up a resistance to the pollen inside the raw honey, your immune response will increase as well.
Is Raw Honey Safe?
Is Raw Honey Safe To Eat?
Thanks to the extensively documented health benefits this amazing food can provide, many people are turning to raw honey. That leads some to wonder about raw honey safety, though. After all, the honey you get from grocery store shelves has been pasteurized specifically for safety reasons, so is it really okay to consume honey in its raw, unpasteurized form?
The Potential Dangers of Eating Raw Honey
You’ll be happy to know that there are very few potential dangers in the consumption of raw honey. In fact, there’s just one true concerning one, and it’s the potential to be exposed to the toxin Clostridium botulinum. If you’ve ever heard of Botox, the cosmetic injection that helps to reduce those fine lines and wrinkles, you’ve heard of Clostridium botulinum.
It’s a bacteria that lives naturally in several places. It’s actually present in honey naturally. Why isn’t this more dangerous than it is? Adults who have a strong immune system almost never grow ill as a result of consuming raw honey with this bacteria inside. Instead, your immune system would fight any dangers from the ingestion of the bacteria.
There are, however, some people who have to be careful with it. For example, children under one year of age can become ill when given any type of honey, even that which has been pasteurized. Pregnant women, or those who are already immunocompromised, are also at risk of having an issue with that bacteria if they consume it in raw honey.
In fact, there’s no statistical risk of this toxin doing real damage to your body from raw honey unless it’s consumed by an infant or someone who is immunocompromised.
Understanding Why Raw Honey is Safe for Most People
To learn more about why raw honey is so safe for most people, it may help to understand exactly how honey is created. When honey bees fly out of the hive, they’re headed out to collect nectar from flowers. They store it in a special part of their body, often called a honey stomach.
Once they get back to the hive, they turn that nectar they’ve created into honey, where it is stored in the hive’s honeycomb and covered in wax until either the bees consume it to keep their colony alive or a beekeeper harvests it.
Once it’s harvested, the honey still has some debris in it, so most beekeepers lightly strain the honey to remove problem objects like big chunks of beeswax or the body parts of dead bees, which sometimes get mixed into the honey. After that, you have raw, natural honey, which is the kind you’ll find that is typically sold as raw honey.
Even then, though, you’ll find pieces of pollen and wax in the actual honey, and while many people worry about that, the simple truth is that you want that in your raw honey. While it doesn’t look as clean as you might imagine, and it might crystallize while it’s on your shelf, it’s actually incredibly good for you and provides a number of different health benefits.
Studies have found that raw honey works as an antioxidant, has potential anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, and offers real nutrients to your body. Unfortunately, though, none of those things come in filtered, processed honey. They only come through the power of raw honey.
If you haven’t yet taken the time to explore the many potential benefits of raw honey, there’s never been a better opportunity. Consider Sunny Honey as an excellent addition to your diet now.
Uses of Raw Honey | Raw Honey Benefits For Health
Uses of Raw Honey
Over the past several years, much press has been given to raw honey, and for good reason. Not only is it a well-known folk remedy dating back thousands of years, but it’s also a well-studied substance in today’s world that may have some real benefits for your health. Just what are the raw honey benefits for health that you can expect once you start using this amazing source of nutrition? Take a look.
Get More Antioxidants:
Raw honey has lots of different plant chemicals inside that act as antioxidants. In fact, some brands contain as many antioxidants as fruits and vegetables do. If you’re not familiar with the power of antioxidants, you should be. They can actually help protect your cells from the damage that excess free radicals can cause, and that may help prevent serious diseases like cancer and diabetes.
Heal Faster:
Raw honey also has antibacterial and antifungal properties, thanks to the hydrogen peroxide that occurs naturally inside. People have used it for years to help heal wounds and fight infection. In fact, today, medical-grade raw honey is still used in many hospitals thanks to its powerful ability to not only heal wounds but also reduce pain and inflammation in seriously injured patients like burn victims.
Stop Digestion Issues:
Many studies have found that raw honey is a great way to treat digestive problems like diarrhea. In fact, it’s even been shown to be a powerful treatment for Helicobacter pylori, which is a leading cause of stomach ulcers in many people. What’s more, though, is that it can work as a prebiotic, so it helps feed the good bacteria in your intestines, so you’ll improve your overall digestive health.
These are far from the only benefits raw honey can provide for your health. In fact, it can do so much more, like help you manage the weight loss process and even fight seasonal allergies.
A Quick Note About Raw Honey vs. Pasteurized Honey
Raw honey isn’t what you might find on the shelves of your local grocery store. Instead, that tends to be carefully filtered, pasteurized honey. When honey is being gathered for bottling and shipping to local grocery stores, it’s filtered multiple times to remove things like beeswax and dead bees; then, it’s heated to an incredibly high temperature to help kill any unwanted yeast and extend the shelf-life.
However, raw honey is gathered in its natural form, then placed in a container for your consumption. While you might see chunks of wax or honeycomb in your honey, it’s important to realize that those are all part of the package, and in fact, they actually enhance the nutritional benefits of consumption.
How to Use Raw Honey to Make Your Healthy
You can use raw honey in a number of different ways. You can simply swallow some each day, but you can also mix it in your smoothies, pour it on your fruit, or even use it as a sandwich topping. No matter how you use it, though, it’s certain to make a delicious, healthy treat for your body.
Ready to try raw honey in your life? Check out what Sunny Honey has to offer!
Ricotta Stuffed Figs
Serving size 4
Ingredients:
- 8 figs
- ½ cup ricotta cheese
- ¼ cup chopped pistachio
- 4 tbs raw honey
- fresh chopped mint
Instructions:
- Using a food processor or blender, roughly chop the pistachios. Transfer to a plate.
- Slice the figs, keeping them connected to the bottom
- Spoon the honey into a small bowl. Dip the figs into the honey and then pistachios. Place the figs on a serving platter. Repeat with the remaining figs. Carefully spoon a tsp of ricotta cheese into the middle of each fig. Drizzle with honey and more pistachios. Add the chopped mint and serve immediately.