Honey: nature’s sugar — but is it actually good for you?

Honey has an extraordinary reputation.

It is natural.

It has been eaten by humans for thousands of years.

Bees make it from flowers rather than factories.

It appears in health foods, herbal remedies, breakfast bowls and cups of tea.

A spoonful of honey somehow feels healthier than a spoonful of white sugar.

But our bodies are less interested in the romance of the beehive than we might imagine.

Honey is, overwhelmingly, sugar.

So does replacing ordinary sugar with honey actually make us healthier?

The answer is nuanced.

Honey is more than sugar — but it is still principally sugar.

What actually is honey?

Honey begins with nectar collected by bees from flowers.

The bees process the nectar enzymatically, reduce its water content and store the resulting concentrated substance in the hive.

Chemically, honey consists predominantly of carbohydrates, particularly the simple sugars fructose and glucose, together with water.

It also contains much smaller quantities of other substances, including organic acids, enzymes, amino acids, minerals and plant-derived compounds such as polyphenols.

Those minor components are one reason honey is scientifically more interesting than ordinary refined sucrose.

But they should not obscure the main ingredient.

When you eat a spoonful of honey, most of the energy you consume comes from sugar.

But isn't sugar natural too?

It is.

This is where descriptions such as "natural sugar" can become misleading.

Sugar itself is not inherently an artificial substance.

Sucrose occurs naturally in plants. Commercial table sugar is commonly extracted from sugar cane or sugar beet.

Fructose occurs naturally in fruit.

Glucose occurs throughout biology.

Honey contains naturally occurring sugars.

The human body does not categorise a glucose molecule as virtuous because it arrived via a bee and sinister because it arrived from a sugar refinery.

Its biological effects depend much more upon the form, quantity and context in which sugars are consumed.

Not all foods containing sugar are equivalent

This distinction is important.

An apple contains sugars.

Honey contains sugars.

A soft drink contains sugars.

That does not make an apple, honey and soft drink nutritionally interchangeable.

Whole fruit contains water, fibre and numerous nutrients within an intact food structure. Fibre and the physical structure of the fruit affect how quickly it is eaten and digested and make whole fruit considerably more filling than an equivalent quantity of sugar dissolved in a drink.

Honey contains some biologically active compounds that refined sugar does not.

But honey does not provide the substantial fibre and food structure of whole fruit.

That is why the World Health Organization includes sugars naturally occurring in honey within its definition of "free sugars", alongside sugars added to foods and those naturally occurring in syrups and fruit juices.

That classification is revealing.

From a public-health perspective, honey is not given a free pass simply because bees produced it.

Is honey healthier than white sugar?

There are some differences.

Ordinary table sugar is sucrose, which is broken down into glucose and fructose during digestion.

Honey already contains substantial quantities of free glucose and fructose and also contains numerous minor compounds not present in refined white sugar.

Different honeys vary considerably according to the flowers visited by the bees, geography, processing and storage.

Some contain antioxidant and antimicrobial compounds that have attracted considerable scientific interest.

Certain medical-grade honeys also have established uses in wound care.

But this creates an important distinction between honey having useful biological properties and eating large quantities of honey being healthy.

They are not the same proposition.

Adding several tablespoons of honey to breakfast does not become nutritionally inconsequential because honey contains antioxidants.

The sugar and energy still count.

What happens when we eat it?

The carbohydrates in honey are digested and absorbed, contributing glucose to the bloodstream and providing energy.

That is not inherently bad.

Glucose is an important fuel for the human body.

The problem with sugar has never been that humans must avoid every molecule of glucose.

The issue is excessive consumption of free sugars, particularly when they contribute substantial energy without the fibre and satiety associated with less processed foods.

The World Health Organization recommends keeping free sugars below 10 per cent of total daily energy intake and suggests reducing them below 5 per cent may provide additional health benefits. Honey counts towards that intake.

For someone consuming around 2,000 calories a day, WHO describes 10 per cent as approximately 50 grams of free sugars.

That allowance is not 50 grams of table sugar plus whatever honey, syrups and fruit juice a person consumes.

They all contribute.

So is sugar actually bad?

Sugar requires more careful language than simply labelling it "bad".

Carbohydrates are a normal component of human nutrition, and the body uses glucose as an important energy source.

The nutritional problem arises particularly when large amounts of free sugar are easily consumed in addition to the energy a person needs.

A bottle of sugary drink can deliver a considerable quantity of sugar without producing the fullness that would accompany eating a substantial meal.

Repeated excess energy intake can contribute to weight gain.

Frequent exposure of teeth to free sugars also promotes dental decay because oral bacteria metabolise those sugars and produce acids that damage tooth enamel. WHO specifically includes honey among the free sugars involved in this process.

The dose and dietary context therefore matter enormously.

A teaspoon of honey in porridge is a very different dietary proposition from consuming large quantities of sweetened foods throughout the day.

Honey's health halo can become the problem

There is an interesting psychological trap surrounding foods perceived as natural.

People may regulate their consumption of something they regard as unhealthy.

Few people would pour half a cup of white sugar onto yoghurt while believing they had created a health food.

Replace that sugar with generous quantities of honey, however, and the perception can change.

The product looks wholesome.

The label might contain words such as raw, organic, natural or unprocessed.

The sugar has not disappeared.

A healthier reputation can paradoxically make overconsumption easier if it persuades people that quantity no longer matters.

What about raw honey?

Raw and minimally processed honeys are frequently promoted as nutritionally superior because they may retain more naturally occurring compounds than heavily processed products.

There may be compositional differences.

But again the distinction needs perspective.

Raw honey remains predominantly sugar.

"Raw" does not transform honey into a vegetable, whole grain or high-fibre food.

Nor does "organic" change the fundamental carbohydrate composition.

These descriptions may tell consumers something meaningful about production or processing.

They do not mean unlimited consumption is nutritionally desirable.

Manuka honey is an interesting exception — but not to the sugar rule

Manuka honey has become particularly famous for its antimicrobial properties.

There is legitimate scientific and medical interest in particular honeys, including medical-grade products used for wound management.

But consumers should distinguish therapeutic applications of specially prepared honey from eating honey as a sweetener.

A substance can possess medically useful properties and simultaneously contain considerable sugar when eaten.

Those statements do not contradict one another.

Honey and diabetes

People managing diabetes need to be particularly careful with the idea that honey is a "healthy sugar".

Honey contains carbohydrates capable of affecting blood glucose.

Replacing table sugar with honey does not mean its carbohydrate content can simply be ignored.

Individual dietary requirements vary, particularly for people taking glucose-lowering medicines or insulin, so personalised advice should come from an appropriate health professional.

The broader principle, however, is straightforward.

Natural does not mean metabolically invisible.

Honey does have one particularly useful advantage

Taste.

Honey has a distinctive flavour and considerable sweetness.

That means some people may find that a relatively small amount provides enough sweetness to make foods such as plain yoghurt or porridge enjoyable.

If a teaspoon of honey replaces a substantially larger quantity of another sweetener, that can be useful.

But the benefit comes partly from using less.

Replacing one spoonful of sugar with three spoonfuls of honey because honey is perceived as healthy defeats the purpose.

And there is one important warning about babies

Honey should not be given to children younger than 12 months because of the risk of infant botulism.

That advice applies even though honey is natural.

It is another useful reminder that "natural" and "safe in every circumstance" are not synonyms.

So should we eat honey?

For most people, there is no reason that modest quantities of honey cannot form part of an otherwise balanced diet.

Enjoy it for what it is.

Honey is a remarkable natural food produced through an equally remarkable biological relationship between flowering plants and bees.

It provides sweetness and flavour.

It contains compounds that make it chemically more complex than refined table sugar.

But it should not be treated as a nutritional loophole.

If someone is trying to reduce their intake of free sugar, replacing every teaspoon of sugar with a teaspoon of honey does not eliminate the fundamental issue.

Sometimes the better strategy is gradually becoming accustomed to food that simply tastes less sweet.

The Times View

Honey illustrates how easily the words we use about food can influence our perception of it.

"Natural" sounds healthy.

"Refined" sounds unhealthy.

Nature is rarely quite that simple.

Honey is unquestionably a natural product. It also contains large quantities of naturally occurring sugar.

Those two facts coexist.

The sensible conclusion is neither that honey is a miracle health food nor that it should be avoided because it contains sugar.

Use it as humans have for thousands of years: as something valuable, intensely sweet and worth enjoying in moderation.

Perhaps the most useful nutritional lesson from honey has little to do with bees.

We spend considerable effort searching for healthier ways to make everything sweet.

Sometimes the healthier choice is not finding a better sugar.

It is needing a little less sweetness in the first place.