Honey is a sweet substance stored in the nest and spleen, which is collected by bees from nectar or nectar secreted outside flowers and mixed with bee enzyme solution after full brewing.

Production process:

Honey is the main product of bees. It is a sweet, viscous, transparent or translucent liquid. Honey mainly comes from nectar, followed by nectar and honey dew. Nectar is the nectar secreted by plant flowers, manna is the excrement of aphids and leafhoppers, and nectar is the nectar secreted by plant flowers. Bees suck nectaries of plants, sap of trees or sweet juice secreted by honey tubes of aphids and leafhoppers with tongue straws, mix saliva with bee mouthparts, temporarily store it in honey bags, return home, spit it out in the nest room and brew it repeatedly.

Honey is that bees suck nectar from the floral organs and nectaries of nectariferous plants with tongue straws, bring it back to the hive, spit it into the hive from the honey sac, and then repeatedly inhale and spit it out by bees, and store the nectar secreted by the honey sac mixed with invertase in the nest. Under the action of enzyme, the polysaccharide in nectar is decomposed into glucose and fructose, and the water content is reduced to about 20%, which basically forms mature honey. Up to now, people can get the finished raw honey by centrifugal action of honey shaker. From the perspective of food science, honey belongs to plant food.

Physical properties of honey: pure and high-quality fresh and mature honey is a viscous, transparent or translucent colloidal liquid with sweet taste and rich fragrance. Inferior honey is often bitter, astringent, sour or smelly. When the temperature is lower than 10℃ or the storage time is too long, it is easy to transform into crystals of different degrees. Different types of honey sources have different physical characteristics.

The main components of honey

Honey has been enduring for thousands of years, which is related to its unique nutritional components. The main components of honey are:

(1) About 65-80% of glucose and fructose can be directly absorbed by human body;

(2) Various amino acids, including 8 essential amino acids that cannot be synthesized by human body, account for about 0.3%;

⑶ About 0.06% of more than 20 minerals, almost equivalent to the content in human serum;

⑷ More than 20 vitamins promote human growth and metabolism;

5] A variety of active enzymes.

Health care function of honey

In Compendium of Materia Medica, Li Shizhen described honey as "clearing away heat, tonifying middle energizer, detoxifying and relieving pain". Modern Chinese medicine believes that honey can mainly prevent and treat:

(1) Gastrointestinal diseases: constipation, duodenal ulcer, colitis, infantile dysentery, etc.

⑵ Nervous system diseases: insomnia and headache.

(3) Infectious wounds, burns and frostbite.

(4) beauty.

Honey and obesity

Sugar is mainly sucrose. Eating too much sugar from food will lead to excess fat and make people fat. The components of honey are different from sugar, mainly fructose and glucose, and also contain protein, amino acids, vitamins, inorganic salts and organic acids. Fructose and glucose are monosaccharides directly absorbed by human body, which can quickly recover and relieve fatigue. Moreover, honey contains more B vitamins, which can convert body fat into energy and release it. So although honey is sweeter than sugar, it won't make people fat. As early as in Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica, which was written before the public, it was recorded that honey was "long and strong, but not old." The so-called "intellectual fit" is to lose weight.

How to take honey

(1) Honey in the mouth can treat pharyngolaryngitis, and it has a miraculous effect on getting angry after staying up late.

⑵ When taken in various beverages and foods, the fragrance is elegant and the taste is sweet, but the temperature should not exceed 60 degrees.

(3) Taking concentrated honey after drinking can accelerate the decomposition of alcohol, eliminate headache after drinking and reduce the damage of alcohol to the liver.

(4) coating lips with honey can prevent the corners of the mouth from rotting; Using honey as a mask can make the skin delicate, smooth and elastic.

The dishes cooked and baked with honey instead of white sugar have good flavor, color and nutrition. In particular, jujube nectar is used in roast chicken and roast duck with golden color and unique flavor. Just try it.

[6] Taking honey half an hour before meals can stimulate gastric acid secretion, so it is advisable to take it before meals because of atrophic gastritis (lack of gastric acid). On the other hand, taking honey two to three hours after meals can inhibit the secretion of gastric acid. If you have hypertrophic gastritis (hyperacidity), you should take it after meals.

A complete collection of various honey effects

(1) Baihua honey is collected among hundreds of flowers, collecting the essence of flowers and the complete works of flowers. Sweet and moist, nutritious and nourishing, it has the effects of clearing away heat, nourishing the middle energizer, detoxifying and moistening dryness, and astringing honey. It is a traditional honey variety.

⑵ Winter honey comes from nectar, a unique Chinese medicine tree species in Lingnan in winter, so it is commonly known as "winter honey". Light amber color, easy crystallization, excellent texture, sweet and slightly bitter taste. In addition to clearing away heat, invigorating the middle energizer, detoxifying and moistening dryness, honey also has the effects of sweating and relieving exterior syndrome, expelling wind and removing dampness, and has a good auxiliary effect on colds, fever, sore throat and rheumatic joint pain. It is a honey variety with Chinese medicine characteristics and is deeply loved by people in Southeast Asia.

(3) Longan honey is a unique honey variety in South China, which has the aroma of longan. This product is beneficial to the heart and spleen with longan, invigorating qi and nourishing blood, nourishing blood and calming the nerves, stimulating appetite and strengthening the spleen, clearing away heat and moistening dryness, caring skin and nourishing the middle energizer. Especially suitable for women.

(4) The south is rich in litchi honey, and litchi is known as the "king of fruits". Litchi honey is collected from the nectar of litchi stamens, which is sweet and slightly sour. It has the special effects of promoting fluid production, nourishing blood, regulating qi, tonifying middle energizer and moistening dryness, which not only moistens honey, but also has the dryness and heat of litchi. It is a unique honey seed in Lingnan and a special honey for distant relatives and friends to be Lingnan people.

5] linden honey is a unique honey variety in Northeast China. Honey is light amber in color, rich in fragrance and easy to crystallize. This product has the effects of nourishing stomach, tonifying deficiency, clearing away heat, invigorating middle warmer, detoxifying and moistening dryness, and has a certain sedative effect. It is deeply loved by Europeans and is a rare forest honey seed.

Milk vetch honey, also known as safflower honey or grass seed honey, is the main honey variety in southern China in spring. It has a natural fresh and pleasant grass fragrance, sweet but not greasy, fresh and clean, sweet, and the color is light amber. This product has the special effects of clearing away heat and toxic materials, dispelling pathogenic wind, improving eyesight, nourishing the middle warmer, moistening dryness, reducing swelling and promoting diuresis. It has a certain auxiliary effect on wind phlegm cough, sore throat and fire hemorrhoids. It is a good health care product for people with exuberant deficiency fire.

Once, Sophora japonica honey was a kind of spring honey. The water is white and transparent, the texture is sticky, and it is not easy to crystallize; There is a faint scent of Sophora japonica, sweet and fresh, and the fragrance is palatable. This product has the effects of removing dampness and diuresis, cooling blood and stopping bleeding, maintaining normal capillary resistance, lowering blood pressure and preventing apoplexy, and also has the effects of clearing heat, invigorating middle warmer, removing toxic substances and moistening dryness. It is the top grade of honey, which is more suitable for the health care of cardiovascular patients.

(8) The rare honey seeds of osmanthus fragrans are collected from wild osmanthus fragrans nectar that blooms and secretes honey in winter in the deep mountain forest. The fragrance is rich and moist, pure and elegant, the taste is fresh and clean, sweet but not greasy, the color is white and transparent, and the crystallization is delicate. Known as the "king of honey". Osmanthus fragrans is also a valuable Chinese herbal medicine. According to the dictionary of traditional Chinese medicine, osmanthus fragrans "dispel wind and remove dampness, cure joint pain ..." Its effective component stevioside has been proved to have good nutrition and health care effects. Sweet-scented osmanthus honey also has the functions of clearing away heat, tonifying middle energizer, detoxifying and moistening dryness, and is deeply loved by people at home and abroad. In ancient times, it was a tribute to the palace.

(9) Coptis chinensis honey is the nectar of Coptis chinensis collected from Chinese herbal medicine nature reserve. It inherits the medicinal properties of Rhizoma Coptidis and the characteristics of honey, which not only has the health and nutritional value of natural honey, but also has the medicinal effect of this precious Chinese medicine. Coptis chinensis honey is yellowish in color and has a special fragrance; Sweet and bitter, sweet but not greasy. It can be said that the good medicine is not bitter, but the effect is still the same. This product has the unique effects of clearing away heat, eliminating dampness, purging fire, detoxicating, resisting bacteria and diminishing inflammation, and has the effects of calming the heart, cooling and removing fire. It is especially suitable for dietotherapy and health care for people who have excessive alcohol and tobacco, strong heart fire and upset.

⑽ Chinese gallnut honey Chinese medicine honey seed. Galla chinensis nectar collected from astringent intestines to stop diarrhea is slightly dark in color, sweet in taste and slightly fragrant with traditional Chinese medicine. This product has the effects of detoxification, antidiarrheal, sterilization and astringency, and has a good auxiliary treatment effect on deficiency of both lung and kidney, deficiency of both spleen and kidney, shortness of breath and phlegm-fire blocking the lung. It is especially suitable for patients with physical weakness, lung deficiency, kidney deficiency, chronic diarrhea and dysentery, hemorrhoids and hematochezia.

⑾ Pogostemon cablin honey is brewed by bees from the nectar of Pogostemon cablin, a rare wild Chinese medicine. Honey is amber, with a unique smell and the aroma of traditional Chinese medicine. Because the ingredients and medicinal properties of Pogostemon cablin honey are inherited from the Chinese herbal medicine Pogostemon cablin, this product is not only generally suitable for nutrition and health care, but also has a good auxiliary role in relieving summer heat and dampness, gastrointestinal discomfort, nausea and vomiting, clearing heat and detoxifying. It is an ideal dietotherapy health product for people with poor gastrointestinal function, dyspepsia and weak constitution.

⑿ Orange honey is collected from the nectar of citrus, with light yellow color, rich orange blossom aroma, sweet and slightly sour taste, fresh and clean, and refreshing. This product has the effects of promoting fluid production to quench thirst, sobering up and diuresis, reducing qi after eating, benefiting stomach heat and toxic substances, and relieving restlessness and sobering up. At the same time, it also has the effects of beauty beauty, resolving phlegm and resolving hard mass, nourishing the middle energizer and moistening dryness. This product is suitable for patients with spleen and stomach dryness, abdominal distension and gastrointestinal diseases.

[13] Salvia Miltiorrhiza honey is a pure natural honey brewed by bees from the flowers of Salvia Miltiorrhiza, which has the effect of "promoting blood production and eliminating pathogenic blood". It is suitable for women with irregular menstruation and menstrual abdominal pain. In addition, Salvia Miltiorrhiza honey can also "cool blood and reduce swelling, clear heart and remove troubles".

[14] Astragalus membranaceus honey Astragalus membranaceus is one of the essential drugs for treating qi deficiency. Astragalus honey is collected from natural Astragalus flowers, which has the effects of benefiting middle warmer, consolidating exterior, promoting diuresis and reducing swelling, thus playing the roles of ascending middle warmer, diuresis, relieving nephritis, lowering blood pressure and strengthening body. It can replenish qi and consolidate exterior, and is suitable for patients with qi deficiency and hyperhidrosis.

⒂ Platycodon grandiflorum honey Platycodon grandiflorum is the main medicine for treating sore throat, which has the effects of dispersing lung qi, eliminating pathogenic factors, resolving phlegm and expelling pus. Platycodon grandiflorum honey comes from natural platycodon grandiflorum nectar, which not only has the effects of clearing away heat, nourishing the middle warmer and moistening dryness, but also is a good food therapy and health care product suitable for exogenous cough, chest tightness and excessive phlegm.

[16] loquat honey is brewed by diligent bees collecting nectar from flowering loquat. Sweet and catchy, the top grade in honey juice. Loquat honey has the effect of "mainly treating cough due to lung heat, vomiting due to stomach heat, hot annoyance and thirst", and has the health care effects of clearing away lung heat and resolving phlegm, relieving cough and asthma, and is an ideal choice for patients with cold, cough and excessive phlegm.

⒄ Codonopsis pilosula honey is a precious Chinese herbal medicine-Codonopsis pilosula nectar brewed by bees, with a sweet taste and amber color. In addition to the characteristics of honey, it is more conducive to invigorating the middle energizer, promoting fluid production and quenching thirst. It has an auxiliary effect on spleen and stomach weakness, deficiency of both qi and blood, mental fatigue, metrorrhagia and anemia in women, and is suitable for people with physical weakness, stomach cold, chronic gastritis and anemia.

⒅ Motherwort honey comes from the pollution-free medicinal motherwort producing area in the southwest plateau of China. This product has the effects of removing blood stasis, promoting tissue regeneration, regulating menstruation and promoting blood circulation. It is suitable for women with irregular menstruation, menorrhagia, prenatal and postpartum, and fully reflects the care for women. For men, especially patients with hypertension, coronary heart disease and nephropathy, motherwort honey is also an ideal health food for health care and adjuvant therapy.

Lycium barbarum honey comes from the main producing area of Lycium barbarum, a valuable Chinese medicine, and is brewed by bees collecting Lycium barbarum nectar. This product not only has the traditional nutritional and health care value of honey, but also is the essence of Lycium barbarum, and has the effects of tonifying kidney, replenishing essence, nourishing liver, improving eyesight, moistening lung and relieving cough. This product is suitable for people with deficiency of both qi and blood, hypertension, physical weakness, decreased vision, anemia, chronic hepatitis, toxic or metabolic liver disease, liver dysfunction caused by biliary system, etc. It is especially suitable for men with kidney deficiency, lumbago, nocturnal emission and busy work.

⒇ The nectar of this dish is light amber, slightly turbid, with the aroma of rape flowers, slightly spicy, and the spicy taste is reduced after long storage, and the taste is sweet and moist; Easy to crystallize, milky white after crystallization, fine or oily crystals. Warm in nature, it has the functions of promoting blood circulation, breaking qi, reducing swelling, dispersing stagnation and enriching blood.

Honey recipes-selected family recipes

Sweet, flat and non-toxic.

Meridian enters lung, spleen, large intestine, heart and stomach.

Efficacy: nourishing yin and moistening dryness, moistening lung and tonifying deficiency, harmonizing various drugs, detoxicating, nourishing temper, pleasing color and harmonizing stomach and intestines.

Indications: weakness of spleen and stomach, constipation due to body fluid failure, gastrointestinal ulcer, mental fatigue, dry cough, dry throat and hoarse voice, spasm and pain in the heart, and good detoxification of aconite and aconite; Topical treatment of aphtha and burn.

Taboo 1, loose stool people should not eat 2, avoid eating with raw onions.

Explain that honey is also called honey, white honey, stone pulp and white honey. According to the different collection seasons, there are winter honey, summer honey and spring honey, with winter honey being the best. According to different flower picking, it can be divided into jujube nectar, Vitex negundo nectar, Sophora japonica nectar, pear nectar, sunflower nectar, buckwheat nectar, Chinese milk vetch nectar, litchi nectar and so on. Among them, jujube nectar, Chinese milk vetch nectar and litchi nectar are of good quality and are superior honey. Honey is a kind of nutritious non-staple food, which has the reputation of "the essence of flowers" and has always been regarded as "a precious gift given by nature to mankind", "a good friend of heart disease" and "a medicine that makes people happy and stay young forever". Honey has been widely used to treat many diseases for a long time and is considered as a treasure to prolong life. In recent years, repeated clinical experiments by medical and health workers in China have proved that honey has different degrees of curative effect on heart disease, liver disease, hypertension, lung disease, eye disease, diabetes, dysentery, constipation, anemia, gastric and duodenal ulcer, arthritis, nervous system disease, dermatosis, scald and frostbite.

Selected recipes of honey diet therapy

1, 50 grams of white honey and 50 grams of radix clematidis each, one dose each morning and evening for one week, which has certain curative effect on esophageal cancer.

2, honey 100 grams, boiled water, to treat leeches (leeches) by mistake.

3, 50 grams of honey, boiled water, once in the morning and evening, used to treat dry cough, dysentery, habitual constipation and senile constipation; If you add 0.3 grams of borneol powder to drink together, you can cure hoarseness.

4, honey 500- 1000 grams, take it suddenly, treat intussusception.

5, a cup of honey melon juice, * * * to treat pregnant urine.

6, honey rub the affected area, or add raw scallion * * * to smash the affected area to treat all burns and sores.

7. Take honey two or three times every morning and evening, with three tablespoons each time. Can be used for treating hypertension and coronary heart disease.

8, 30 grams of lotus root powder, stir into a paste with boiling water, add 30 grams of honey to warm clothes, have the effect of clearing away heat and deficiency, moistening the lungs and relieving cough.

9, fresh lotus root juice 100 ml, 30 grams of honey, mixed and taken once a day for several days. It can be used for treating fever such as cough due to lung heat, dry throat and sore throat, and epistaxis due to blood heat.

10, Bulbus Fritillariae Cirrhosae 5g, honey 30g, steamed for half an hour. Treat chronic lung dry cough, dry cough without phlegm, or blood in phlegm.

1 1, 30g of honeysuckle, two bowls of water are decocted into one bowl, dregs are removed, juice is taken, 20g of honey is poured in, and taken twice in the morning and evening. Can be used for treating influenza, pharyngitis and constipation of the elderly.

12, 15g black sesame (mashed), 30g honey and 30g milk, and take it on an empty stomach in the morning. It can be used for treating postpartum constipation of the elderly or women, and also has the effect of beautifying and blackening hair.

13, bletilla striata, Stemona Stemona12g, Fructus Trichosanthis15g (mashed), decoct in water to get juice, and pour in a proper amount of honey, which can be taken twice, to treat pulmonary tuberculosis. 14. There are unlimited fresh mulberries. Mashed and wrapped with gauze to get juice. After heating and concentrating, add proper amount of honey, boil it into paste, cool it and bottle it. Take two tablespoons with boiling water every morning and evening. It can be used to treat young people's gray hair, deficiency of both qi and blood after illness, neurasthenia and other diseases.

15, 250g of milk, add 30g of honey after boiling, and take it on an empty stomach. Has the effects of nutrition, body building and beauty care.

Identify the quality of honey

At present, the market is often full of fake honey, mainly made of high fructose corn syrup, which is very light in color and extremely clear and transparent. But compared with honey, it has a single nutrition and no vitamins, amino acids, minerals and active enzymes. Consumers should choose specialty stores to buy products with guaranteed quality. Consumers can simply identify the quality of honey by the following methods:

(1) Taste and smell: Consumers can taste and smell it when buying to see if honey has oily or peculiar smell. Generally, honey with good quality tastes sweet and has a faint smell consistent with floral fragrance. If the aroma is too strong, it may be mixed with essence, while the honey with poor quality is bitter, astringent, sour and even smelly.

⑵ Identification of water content: Good quality honey has less water content and high viscosity; Stir the honey with a sterilized glass rod, and the honey will be filiform and extremely long. Honey with high water content feels very thin.

Honey with crystals

Honey crystallization is a purely physical phenomenon, not a chemical change, so it has no effect on its nutritional components and edible value, and crystallized honey is more convenient to store and transport. Crystallized honey often makes consumers mistake it for "molasses". Although destroying the crystal nucleus by high temperature heating can prevent honey from crystallizing, I don't know that the nutritional components of honey have been destroyed and there are no active substances!

But there is indeed honey mixed with white sugar on the market. The difference is that sugar crystals are hard and difficult to melt by hand, while honey crystals are easy to melt by hand.

Light honey and dark honey

The color of honey is directly related to the types of honey sources collected by bees, and the color of honey brewed by nectar from different honey sources is obviously different. Some people think that the lighter the color, the better the quality of honey. It is true that acacia honey and some light-colored honey are fragrant and of good quality, but longan honey, dangshen honey and jujube honey are also excellent honey. According to nutrition experts, the content of protein and iron in dark honey is about 50% higher than that in light honey. No wonder the British and Germans have a soft spot for black honey.

Identification method of true and false honey

One: Smell the single-flower honey, which has the unique flower fragrance of this plant, the mixed honey has the natural flower fragrance, and the fake honey has some sucrose flavor and some spice flavor.

Two: Vision

1. Look at the concentration of honey, put a chopstick in the honey and lift it vertically. High-concentration honey drips slowly, which is sticky and can be pulled, and can be shrunk into honey pills after being broken. False honey or low concentration honey is the opposite. Even if the silk can be stretched, the broken silk has no elasticity and will not shrink into honey beads.

It is wise to drop a drop of honey in the newspaper. High concentration of pure honey is hemispherical, so it is difficult to soak in newspapers, and low concentration of honey or fake honey is easy to soak in newspapers.

3. Take a glass of water and add a little honey. Real honey will sink to the bottom of the cup quickly and will not melt easily. When stirring slowly with chopsticks, there will be repeated phenomena of filar silk. If it is fake honey, it will soon dissolve in water.

4. Looking at crystallization, the crystallization of honey is related to the plant species and temperature. Generally, pure natural honey is easy to crystallize at 13- 14 degrees Celsius. Honey that can be completely crystallized generally has low water content, high concentration and is not easy to deteriorate, so it is a high-quality honey. Crystallized pure honey is twisted by hand, which feels delicate and has no sense of sand. False honey is not easy to crystallize, or some of it is precipitated. The precipitate is hard and not easy to crush.

Three: pure natural honey, sweet and slightly sour, soft and delicate, refreshing and soft, slightly spicy in the throat and long aftertaste. Although adulterated honey tastes sweet, it has a weak throat feeling and a short aftertaste when mixed with sugar or spices.

Chemical test: Honey mixed with starch will turn blue when iodine solution is added. When honey mixed with maltose is added with high concentration ethanol, white flocs will appear. Honey mixed with other impurities will be inserted into honey with red-hot iron wire, and sticky substances are attached to the iron wire.

Cryopreservation crystallization test: Honey will become solid after being stored for a period of time at 4 to 14 degrees Celsius, which is a physical phenomenon of honey. Real honey crystal sticks to one eye with chopsticks, which is very soft and can't stick to fake honey. Real honey is pinched by hand, and the crystallization melts quickly, while fake honey has the feeling of pinching hands, and it melts slowly or does not dissolve. The real honey crystal has a low bite, while the fake honey crystal is crisp and loud. Pour out the honey and let it solidify a little. If it is true, honey will form a hexagonal structure like a honeycomb, but it is not.

In a word, there may be some errors in identifying honey by only one method. A kind of honey can be identified by many methods at the same time. Under normal circumstances, honey can be judged to be true or false.