What honey does for you

A taste sugar lacks

Sugar is a single pure substance; honey is a mixture. Besides fructose and glucose it contains small amounts of other sugars, organic acids, enzymes, amino acids, minerals, pollen and aroma compounds from the nectar. That is why every varietal honey tastes different: acacia is mild and vanilla-like, buckwheat sharp and malty, chestnut bitter. Honey brings flavour and aroma to the kitchen, not just sweetness.

In detailHow honey is tasted →

A food without additives

The EU Honey Directive forbids adding anything to honey – no additives, sugar or preservatives – and forbids removing pollen or any other of its own constituents unless this is unavoidable when removing foreign matter. Nor does it need preserving: it holds little water, is acidic, and its high sugar content stops microorganisms from growing. In a well-closed jar it keeps for a very long time; at most it crystallises, which is natural.

Coughs from colds

The best-documented benefit of honey concerns coughs. A 2018 Cochrane review pooled six trials with 899 children aged one to eighteen: honey relieved coughs better than no treatment or placebo, and at least as well as diphenhydramine, an antihistamine used in cough syrups; adverse events were no more frequent than in the comparison groups. A 2020 University of Oxford analysis of fourteen trials found that honey improved symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections better than usual care, particularly the frequency and severity of coughing.

Since 2019 the UK's NICE has listed honey in its guideline on acute cough as one of the options people can try themselves, for anyone over one year old. Honey is no substitute for seeing a doctor with a high fever, shortness of breath or a cough lasting weeks.

Wounds and burns

Honey was applied to wounds in antiquity, and modern medicine is returning to it – as sterile medical-grade honey, irradiated so that no bacterial spores survive and sold as a wound dressing. A 2015 Cochrane review found that superficial and partial-thickness burns healed about four to five days faster under honey than under conventional dressings, a finding it rated as well supported. For other wound types the studies were too varied for a clear conclusion. Kitchen honey from a jar, however, does not belong on an open wound: it is not sterile.

Why honey stops bacteria

In the laboratory honey stops many bacteria from growing. Several things work together: the high sugar content, which draws water out of bacteria, acidity, and hydrogen peroxide, produced in diluted honey by the bee enzyme glucose oxidase. Manuka honey adds methylglyoxal. In 2010 a Dutch team took a medical-grade honey apart component by component and found one more weapon: defensin-1, a protein bees make for their own immune defence and add to honey.

In detailManuka and the numbers on the jar →

Antioxidants from dark honeys

Honey contains polyphenols and other compounds that act as antioxidants in laboratory tests. Their amount varies widely between honeys, and as a rule dark honeys contain more than light ones; buckwheat honey ranks high. In a small 2003 trial, drinking buckwheat honey dissolved in water briefly raised the blood antioxidant capacity of healthy men by about 7%. Whether this matters for long-term health has not been shown.

Blood sugar and blood fats

Honey contains more fructose, which raises blood sugar less than glucose. Its glycaemic index therefore depends on the kind: the 2002 international glycaemic index tables give values from about 30 to over 80 for different honeys, averaging about 55, and a fructose-rich Romanian acacia honey scored only 32. For comparison, table sugar (sucrose) scores about 68.

A 2022 Toronto meta-analysis pooled eighteen controlled trials with over a thousand participants. Honey modestly lowered fasting blood sugar, total and “bad” LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, and modestly raised “good” HDL cholesterol; raw single-flower honey such as acacia or clover gave the most favourable results. The authors stressed, however, that the certainty of evidence is low and that participants ate healthily, with added sugars below a tenth of daily energy intake. In other words, honey may be a better choice than another sweetener, not a reason to sweeten more.

Energy for sport

Honey is a quick source of energy that is easy to carry. In a 2004 US trial, trained cyclists rode a 64-kilometre time trial; with honey and with a glucose gel alike they were faster than with a placebo, and no difference between honey and glucose was found. Only nine riders took part, though.

What has not been confirmed

The popular advice that local honey protects against hay fever because it contains local pollen has weak support. Studies contradict each other: a 2002 US trial found no effect compared with placebo, a 2013 Malaysian one did, and a Finnish pilot study with honey enriched with birch pollen showed promising but preliminary results. In 2010 the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) assessed several proposed health claims for honey and found no cause-and-effect relationship. Honey labels in the EU may therefore not promise health effects.

Things to remember

Honey is not given to children under twelve months, not even in tea or baking. It may contain spores of Clostridium botulinum, which do not harm adults or older children but can multiply in a baby's immature gut and cause infant botulism. Honey is also mostly sugar: 100 grams contain about 304 kilocalories against 387 for sugar – the difference being mainly that honey is about 17% water. The World Health Organization counts it among free sugars, which should stay below ten per cent of daily energy intake. People with diabetes, and teeth, need the same care as with sugar.

Good for the landscape too

Buying honey from a local beekeeper supports something that does not fit in the jar. According to the FAO, three out of four crops that give people fruit or seeds depend at least partly on pollinators. In Western Europe, the FAO estimates, bee pollination is worth thirty to fifty times as much as all the honey and wax harvested.

In detailWhy bees are declining →