Introduction
Honey is a natural product formed from the nectar of flowers by honeybees (Apis mellifera; Family: Apidae). Ancient civilizations like Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, and Babylonians used honey for the treatment of various diseases. Depending on the various liquid sources of the flowers and plants there are 320 different varieties of honey that are available. The benefits of honey are good for digestion, increase metabolism, and improves memory and skin quality hence honey can be used as a sugar substitute.
Composition of Honey
The main composition of honey is flavor, and aroma which depends mainly on the plant sources, climate, and environmental conditions. Natural honey is made-up of about 200 substances including carbohydrates (82.4 %), fructose (38.5%), glucose (31%), other sugars (12.9%), water (17.1%), protein (0.5%). Other compounds are organic acids, multi-minerals, amino acids, vitamins, phenols. Minor amounts of bioactive components such as flavonoids, polyphenols, reducing compounds, alkaloids, glycosides, cardiac glycosides, anthraquinone, and volatile compounds.
Honey as a sugar substitute
There is a big question that arises whether we can use honey as a sugar substitute?
We can use honey as a sugar substitute but can not follow blindly that honey is all good for health and blood sugar level. Yes, honey has a lower glycemic index but still, it is sweeter than that of sugar and due to this it can affect the blood sugar level. We should again use honey in control in order to be healthy and avoid overconsumption of honey.
Honey improves cholesterol level
Honey is a mixture of glucose and fructose. The intake of honey improves the lipid profile. Such as decrease total cholesterol, triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein. And also increase high-density lipoprotein in healthy as well as hypertriglyceridemia patients.
In diabetic patients, after the consumption of honey, plasma glucose levels increase and showed a rapid decline compared to that of glucose which indicates the lower glycaemic response of honey. Moreover, honey compared with dextrose (sugar) significantly lower the rise of plasma glucose level and enhances insulin level compared to sucrose. Therefore as compared with sucrose, honey may be used as a sugar substitute in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (1).
Honey has a lower glycemic index
Although honey has a lower glycaemic index than sugar. But it is still sweeter than sugar and contains high calories. Which affects blood sugar levels, increases HbA1c (worse the diabetes complications), and characterized as a free sugars category. Furthermore, all the research that justifies honey as a sugar substitute is only done in animals. Therefore it may not be truthfully generalized to the human condition. Thus no one knows the effects of long-term consumption of honey in humans. Thus the dietary or therapeutic use of honey in diabetic patients as a sugar substitute is still controversial. Ant, therefore, needs to be consumed with caution by patients with type 2 diabetes (2, 3).