Honey is a kind of food brewed by bees after collecting nectar secretion from plants. Honey contains 180 different substances, mainly glucose and fructose. Other ingredients include many amino acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fragrances, pigments, hormones, organic acids, enzymes and bioactive substances.

Honey is not only food, but also tonic and natural medicine. Because honey contains a lot of glucose and fructose, it is easily absorbed by the human body, especially suitable for the elderly, children, pregnant women and the weak after illness. As a natural sweetener, honey is widely used in various foods. Any food with sucrose as the ingredient can be partially or completely replaced by honey. Honey can be used to make cakes, various drinks and brew mead, and it is also widely used in chemical industry.

Honey can inhibit and kill bacteria. Bacteria without spores that cause human diseases cannot live in honey. Honey has certain curative effect on hepatitis, gastropathy, heart disease, hypertension, nephritis, anemia, constipation, duodenal ulcer and bedsore ulcer. Applying honey to scalded skin can relieve pain and help the wound heal.

Honey should be stored in nonmetallic containers, such as ceramics and nontoxic plastics. Should be placed in a cool, dry, clean and ventilated warehouse, the temperature is 5- 10℃, and the air humidity is not more than 75%.

Honey should be taken with warm water below 40℃. Overheating will inactivate enzymes and lose vitamins.

nectar source

Honey is a sweet substance which is stored in the hive after bees fully brew the collected plant nectar or secretion. It is a sweet and viscous, transparent or translucent liquid.

Honey comes from different plants and is divided into single nectar and mixed nectar. ; According to different production methods, it can be divided into nest honey and honey separation; According to different physical properties, it can be divided into liquid honey and crystalline honey; According to different harvest seasons, it can be divided into spring honey, summer honey, autumn honey and winter honey; According to the length of the harvest cycle, it is divided into immature honey and mature honey; In terms of color, it can be divided into light honey and deep honey.

Main honey varieties

Spring: rape honey, milk vetch honey, seed honey, apricot honey, citrus honey, litchi honey, longan honey and rubber tree honey. Summer: Robinia pseudoacacia honey, jujube honey, linden honey honey, spike honey, Vitex negundo honey, cotton honey, sweet clover honey and persimmon honey. Autumn: sunflower honey, Lespedeza honey, buckwheat honey, pumpkin honey. Winter: Duck feet honey, wild osmanthus honey, wild bazi honey, eucalyptus grandis honey, loquat honey.

What kind of honey is good?

The nutritional value and medicinal efficacy of all kinds of honey are similar, but the difference in color, fragrance and taste is due to the difference in honey source plants. Honey with light and transparent color, light fragrance and sweet taste is easily accepted by people, such as litchi, longan, loquat, citrus, acacia and linden (loquat honey has a strong almond flavor, but some people don't like it). The price of these honey is naturally more expensive than that of camellia, sesame, butter, eucalyptus, buckwheat and other honey with dark brown turbidity, rich aroma and unpleasant taste. Usually called mountain honey, wild flower honey, miscellaneous flower honey, hundred flower honey and earth honey, all kinds of mixed honey are generally poor in color, fragrance and taste, and some even contain poisonous honey, so it is necessary to know the origin and harvest season of honey to avoid accidental poisoning. Generally speaking, light honey tastes better and costs more than dark honey, while dark honey is more nutritious and cheaper than light honey. Honey with color, fragrance, taste and price between light honey and dark honey, such as rape, sunflower and Vitex negundo, can be described as affordable honey. Bottled honey marked as "honey" in the market is a kind of mixed honey with rape as the main component.

"Honey is flat and sweet" has been recorded in ancient and modern medical books. However, there are some small differences between Datong, such as rape, camellia and loquat, which are cool in nature, and have better effects of clearing away heat and toxic materials, moistening dryness and relaxing bowels, especially loquat has obvious effects on cough caused by lung heat. Litchi, longan, jujube and other honey are mild and warm, so they have good effects of tonifying the middle warmer, strengthening the spleen and regulating the stomach, especially jujube honey is suitable for people with spleen and stomach deficiency, abdominal distension and constipation.

In a word, which kind of honey to buy is good, should be chosen reasonably according to everyone's taste, physical requirements and economic situation.

Main nutritional components

The main component of honey is sugar, accounting for more than 3/4 of the total honey, including monosaccharide, disaccharide and polysaccharide. The sum of fructose and glucose accounts for 85%~95% of honey sugar. The content of minerals is generally 0.04%~0.06%, including iron, copper, potassium, sodium, tungsten, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, lead, chromium, nickel and cobalt. Dark honey contains more functional minerals than light honey. Vitamin; Contains B vitamins, as well as vitamin C, nicotinic acid, pantothenic acid, biotin and nicotinic acid.

The content of protein in honey is between 0.29%- 1.69%, with an average of 0.75%. The content of some flower seeds is as high as 1% or more than 2%, such as longan honey, litchi honey, milk vetch honey, Vitex negundo, rape honey and so on. Different regions, due to different geographical climate, the same kind of honey contains different protein. For example, the longan honey content in Fujian is 2.597%, that in Guangdong is 1.698%, and that in Hainan is 0.80%. During the honeymoon period of Chinese milk vetch, the yield in Hubei was 0.80 1%, and the content in Hunan was 0.58%.

The content of amino acids in honey is not only abundant, but also complete, and some kinds of nectar are as high as 18. Among them, aspartic acid, glutamic acid and leucine are the main amino acids, followed by threonine, serine, glycine, alanine, valine, isoleucine and lysine. And the essential amino acids that people need are widely distributed. Such as threonine, valine, leucine, isoleucine and lysine. This further explains the high nutritional value of honey.

Because honey has high nutritional value, taking honey can promote digestion and absorption, stimulate appetite, calm down and sleep, improve the body's immunity, and play a positive role in promoting the growth and development of babies. Honey contains almost all kinds of nutrients that babies need for growth and development. It is especially suitable for frailty, neurasthenia, convalescence after illness, senile asthenia and malnutrition. It has considerable curative effect on heart disease, hepatitis, anemia, hypertension, cough, constipation, scald, frostbite, stomach and duodenum.

It is beneficial to use honey instead of sugar.

Russian scholars pointed out that eating honey can get a lot of active substances except sugar. Such as various minerals, vitamins and enzymes. There are more than 32 chemical elements in honey. Its content is similar to that of mineral elements in human tissues. Therefore, eating honey can supplement the deficiency of human growth and development elements, and can prevent and treat physiological anemia and constipation.

In recent years, honey has been used in health care at home and abroad. Replacing sugar with honey is both sweet and nutritious. Honey contains iron, folic acid, monosaccharide, invertase and vitamins, which are necessary to promote children's growth and development, and these are what milk lacks.

Drinking a cup of honey water every morning and evening is very beneficial to the elderly with hypertension. Because honey contains potassium, it can excrete sodium after entering the human body. It can maintain the electrolyte balance in the blood. In addition, for patients with chronic hepatitis and poor liver function, eating honey often can improve liver function. Honey is a good natural nutrient for patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and chronic cough caused by fatigue, which can enhance physical fitness. Elderly people with gastric and duodenal ulcer diseases often take honey for better effect. For heartburn patients, 30 grams of honey can be taken with warm boiled water during the attack, and a few drops of ginger juice can relieve the symptoms.

1. Honey should not be stored in iron containers, but in glass containers or non-toxic plastic containers.

Honey should be sealed and preserved. Tools for taking honey should be washed and dried to prevent moisture from entering. The dissolved water in honey is easy to ferment and deteriorate.

3. Good honey can generally crystallize below 15- 18 degrees and become white or yellowish crystals.

4. Honey can't be eaten with onions.

5, honey should be washed with warm water below 40 degrees, too high water temperature will destroy honey.

What is the main ingredient of honey? What does it have to do with human health?

A: Honey has been enduring for thousands of years, which is related to its unique nutritional composition. 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%;

(3) About 0.06% of more than 20 minerals are almost equal to those contained in human serum;

(4) More than 20 kinds of vitamins promoting human growth and metabolism; (5) A variety of active enzymes.

3. What is the health care function of honey?

Answer: 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.

(2) Nervous system diseases: insomnia and headache.

(3) Infectious wounds, burns and frostbite.

(4) beauty.

Can eating too much honey lead to obesity?

A: Some consumers think that honey is rich in sugar, and eating too much will lead to obesity, which is actually confusing honey with general nutrients. Honey is mainly composed of glucose and fructose, accounting for about 65-80%; The content of sucrose is very small, less than 5%. Because glucose and fructose can be directly absorbed by the human body, the absorption process is not accompanied by fat precipitation, so it will not cause obesity.

6. Is the crystallized honey adulterated or deteriorated?

A: The answer is no, because honey crystallization is a pure physical phenomenon, not a chemical change, which has no effect on its nutritional composition 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!

However, honey mixed with white sugar does exist in the market. The difference is that sugar crystals are hard and difficult to melt by hand. But honey crystals melt easily by hand twisting.

7. Which is better, light honey or deep honey?

A: Everything is fine! 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. Indeed, acacia honey and some light-colored honey are very fragrant and of good quality. But longan honey, codonopsis pilosula honey and jujube honey also belong to the first-class 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.

8. Honey is a natural food and traditional medicine. Please tell me some simple ways to take it.

A:

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

(2) When mixed into various beverages and foods, it has elegant aroma and sweetness, but it should be noted that 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.

(5) Cooking and baking dishes with honey instead of white sugar have good flavor, color and nutrition, especially jujube honey used for roast chicken and roast duck, which is golden in color and unique in flavor. Try it.

(6) Taking honey half an hour before meals can stimulate gastric acid secretion, and it should be taken 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.

9. How to identify the quality of honey?

A: 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 honey at the time of purchase, and observe whether there is oily smell or peculiar smell. Generally, honey with good quality tastes sweet and has a faint fragrance consistent with flowers. 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.

(2) Identification of moisture content: Good quality honey has less moisture content and high viscosity. If you stir honey with a sterilized glass rod, it will become filamentous and extremely long. Honey with high water content feels very thin.

What is the difference between raw honey and refined honey?

Raw honey is the raw honey obtained by bee farmers in the field. Due to the limitation of field conditions, the impurity content of raw honey is high (bee carcasses, wax residue, plant impurities, etc.). ), the concentration is low, the maturity varies greatly, and the state is unstable. However, the nutrients in the original honey remain intact and the price is more affordable.

Refined honey is a kind of high-concentration pure mature honey, which is made from raw honey through low-temperature heat treatment, concentration, fine filtration, sterilization and crystal nucleus crushing.

Refined honey is usually marketed in the form of finished products after strict packaging, and its characteristics are: (1) pure quality (forced high-mesh screening). (2) The state is relatively stable (the amorphous phase is stable for a long time, and the crystal after secondary crystallization is fine and soft with good quality). (3) The moisture is fully lost, the Baume degree is greatly improved, the taste is stronger, and the shelf life is far longer than that of the original honey. The refined honey completely meets or even exceeds GB 14963-94 National Hygienic Standard for Honey and GH0 12-82 National Standard for Honey.

Honey is a sweet substance that bees mix the collected nectar of plants or nectar secreted by insects with the secretion of salivary glands of bees, and store it in the hive after full brewing. Known as "natural food", "popular tonic", "old age milk" and "king of sugar".

composition

Honey is a complex mixture of sugar. Among them, glucose and fructose are about

It accounts for 65%-80% of the total, followed by water and sucrose. In addition, it also contains a small amount of maltose, polysaccharide, protein, organic acids and aromatic substances. It is worth mentioning that honey is also rich in vitamins, more than 20 kinds of macro elements and trace elements needed by human body, and 10 kinds of enzymes, which have great effects on human body.

efficacy

Honey is rich in nutrition, which can soothe the nerves and increase intelligence, improve sleep, moisten the lungs, lubricate the stomach and intestines, and resist bacteria. According to clinical evidence, honey has a certain curative effect on the following diseases: constipation, colitis, dysentery in children, burns, tuberculosis, liver protection, skin ulcers, malnutrition and indigestion in children, anorexia, bronchitis, rhinitis, anemia, hypertension, insomnia and so on. In clinic, honey combined with propolis and royal jelly has good curative effect on infectious hepatitis and icteric hepatitis.

dosage

Natural honey can be taken directly without any processing. Adhere to regular quantitative, generally speaking, adults use 50- 100 grams a day, and children and adolescents use 30-50 grams; Children can take 10- 15g.

Taking method

Mature honey can be eaten directly or mixed with water or milk, but it must not be brewed with boiling water or cooked at high temperature. The reason is that the bioactive substances such as enzymes and vitamins in honey have poor thermal stability, which is easy to reduce the nutritional value of honey. In addition, honey water and boiled water are mixed and volatilized, the taste changes, and the food has an unpleasant sour taste. Therefore, it is best to use warm water or cold water below 60℃ to take honey. For patients with gastrointestinal diseases, more attention should be paid to the method of taking. For patients with hyperacidity, hypertrophic gastritis and gastric and duodenal ulcer, taking warm honey water 0.5- 1 hour before meals can not only inhibit the secretion of gastric juice, but also reduce the acidity of gastric juice, thus reducing the irritation to gastric mucosa and facilitating ulcer healing. Patients with gastric acid deficiency or atrophic gastritis should eat cold honey water immediately after meals. For people with chronic diarrhea, it is best to avoid honey. For patients without gastrointestinal diseases, honey can be taken on an empty stomach twice in the morning and evening.

Official grade of honey in China.

First-class honey: [linden honey, Sophora japonica honey, litchi honey, citrus honey, milk vetch honey, Vitex negundo, etc. ]

Second-class honey: rape honey, jujube honey, sunflower honey, cotton honey, etc.

Third-class honey: [Ubuntu honey, etc]

Isohoney: [buckwheat honey, eucalyptus honey, etc. ]

Good luck.