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Uses and Benefits of Local, Raw Honey
Not only does raw honey taste delicious, but it is good for you, too!
Raw honey has been used as a folk remedy throughout history and has a variety of health benefits and medical uses. When you have a sore throat or a cough, honey is one of the best, and tastiest, salves nature has to offer. Many of these health benefits are specific to raw, or unpasteurized, honey.
Most of the honey you find in grocery stores is pasteurized. The high heat kills unwanted yeast, can improve the color and texture, removes any crystallization, and extends the shelf life. Many of the beneficial nutrients are also destroyed in the process.
The first record of beekeeping dates back to 2400 B.C., in Cairo. For millennia, cultures around the world, including the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Chinese, have fallen for the sweet substance. All these cultures used it both in medicine and in the kitchen.
Honey is commonly used as a sweetener. It’s made up of 70–80 percent sugar; the rest is water, minerals, and protein. It’s also used to alleviate allergies. But honey has many other uses. Surprisingly, many of the conditions that honey is used to treat are far more serious than the simple sore throat. If you’re interested in trying raw honey, just be sure to buy it from a trusted local producer.
Julia Mangan, Author of A Little Bit of All of It, offers the following as just some of the health benefits of raw honey:
Local, raw honey has healing properties. Add it to your hot tea to soothe a sore throat, for instance. Because it has antimicrobial properties, it doesn’t just soothe your throat as it coats it; it can also kill certain bacteria.
Local, raw honey helps with seasonal allergies. Don’t bother with allergy shots; take honey “shots” instead! The same allergens that trigger a reaction in you are present in local, raw honey. By ingesting the honey regularly, you are, in effect, taking “shots” of the allergen in small, manageable doses. The effect over time is similar to getting a whole series of allergy immunology injections. Doesn’t taking honey sound a lot more pleasant?
Local, raw honey reduces the lifespan of colds. Eating two ounces a day can reduce a cold by up to two days! How awesome is that?
Local, raw honey is a natural antiseptic. As mentioned above, honey has antimicrobial properties. That’s what makes it great for treating wounds. Because many types of bacteria can’t survive in honey, it speeds up healing, diminishes swelling, and gives tissue the opportunity to grow back more quickly.
Local, raw honey helps tame the stomach flu. Because raw honey calms the inflammation of the stomach, it is a great pain reliever for the stomach flu.
Those are just five reasons local, raw honey is fantastic but there are a whole host of awesome health benefits to honey besides those five.
But you may be wondering, why local and why raw?
Many of the health benefits of honey are lost when it is filtered and heated to high temperatures.
Local, raw honey has unique flavors that are lost when industrialized.
To help with allergies, you need to have local, raw honey. This will insure that the honey has the allergens native to the area you live in.
Buying local is better and not just because it reduces pollution and saves resources. Bees shipped from elsewhere pollinating one crop is how commercial honey is made. This is completely unnatural and hard on bees. Let’s keep the bees home and pollinating as nature intended.
Local, raw honey is full of all kinds of healthy ingredients. Industrial methods dilute the good stuff out.
In addition of the above medicinal uses of honey, can also be used in cooking and baking to add sweetness and impart exceptional flavors. Particularly in baking, honey is used to sweeten bakery foods naturally and to enhance the flavors of other ingredients. Naturally occurring organic acids in honey, such as gluconic acid, enhance the flavors of spices, fruits and nuts. When used with cinnamon, herbs, spices or other flavors, honey helps bring out those tastes and aromas.
Because of its high fructose content, honey is sweeter than sugar, allowing bakers to use less honey than sugar to achieve the desired sweetness. When substituting honey for sugar in formulas, begin by substituting honey for up to half of the sugar called for in the formulas. Honey can be used as a complete or partial replacement for almost any sweetener. However, differences in formulas and baking environment make substitution guidelines slightly different dependent on the formula.
In bakery foods, honey performs many roles beyond sweetening bakery foods. Products that contain honey dry out more slowly and have a lesser tendency to crack. This is due to honey’s hygroscopicity. Honey also provides more uniform baking with a more evenly browned crust at lower temperatures as a result of the sweetener’s fructose content.
And if want a quick dose of raw honey but don’t have time to bake, here are a few ideas for delicious fast honey fixes!
Add it to teas or other favorite hot drinks
Add it to smoothies
Spread it on toast or bagels
Drizzle it over yogurt and/or granola
Mix it with butter for extra delicious honey butter
Add it to peanut butter sandwiches
Replace maple syrup with it on pancakes or waffles