Alternative Medicines

Honey is one of the mirracles that nature gives. Beside the sweet flavour and the beautifull goldish color, it is actually the jewel of medicine. Honey can be a good remedy for skin burn, stomach ache and beauty care. But before we jump into that discussion, let us see what is honey.

Nutrition

Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds. With respect to carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about 31.0%),^[4] making it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup which is approximately 48% fructose, 47% glucose, and 5%

sucrose. Honey’s remaining carbohydrates include maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates.^[4] Honey contains trace amounts of several vitaminsminerals.^[17] As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and is not a significant source of vitamins or minerals.^[18] Honey also contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and pinocembrin.^[19][20] The specific composition of any batch of honey will depend largely on the mix of flowers available to the bees that produced the honey.^[18]

Typical honey analysis^[18]

• Fructose: 38.5%
• Glucose: 31.0%
• Sucrose: 1.0%
• Water: 17.0%
• Other sugars: 9.0% (maltose, melezitose)
• Ash: 0.17%
• Other: 3.38%

Classification by floral source

Generally, honey is classified by the floral source of the nectar from which it was made. Honeys can be from specific types of flower nectars, from indeterminate origin, or can be blended after collection.

Blended

Most commercially available honey is blended, meaning that it is a mixture of two or more honeys differing in floral source, color, flavor, density or geographic origin.

Polyfloral

Polyfloral honey, also known as wildflower honey,is derived from the nectar of many types of flowers. The taste may vary from year to year, and the aroma and the flavour can be more or less intense, depending on which bloomings are prevalent.

Monofloral

Monofloral honey is made primarily from the nectar of one type of flower. Different monofloral honeys have a distinctive flavor and colour because of differences between their principal nectar sources.^[27]In order to produce monofloral honey beekeepers keep beehives in an area where the bees have access to only one type of flower. In practice, because of the difficulties in containing bees, a small proportion of any honey will be from additional nectar from other flower types. Typical examples of North American monofloral honeys are clover, orange blossom, sage, eucalyptus, tupelo, manuka, buckwheat, and sourwood. Some typical European examples include thyme, thistle, heather, acacia, dandelion, sunflower, honeysuckle, and varieties from lime and chestnut trees.

Honeydew honey

Instead of taking nectar, bees can take honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids or other plant sap-sucking insects. Honeydew honey is very dark brown in colour, with a rich fragrance of stewed fruit or fig jam and is not as sweet as nectar honeys. Germany’s Black Forest is a well known source of honeydew-based honeys, as well as some regions in Bulgaria. Honeydew honey is popular in some areas, but in other areas beekeepers have difficulty selling the stronger flavored product.

The production of Honeydew honey has some complications and dangers. The honey has a much larger proportion of indigestibles than light floral honeys, which can cause dysentery to the bees, resulting in the death of colonies in areas with cold winters. Good beekeeping management requires the removal of honeydew prior to winter in colder areas. Bees collecting this resource also have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers.

Distinguishing quality honey

Honey grading

Honey grading is performed voluntarily based upon USDA standards. The quality of honey is graded based upon a number of factors including: soluble solids, water content, flavor, aroma, clarity, absence of defects, and color.^[42] The honey grade scale is:

• Grade A – Good
• Grade B – Reasonably Good
• Grade C – Fairly Good
• Substandard – Poor, Failing

Indicators of quality

High quality honey can be distinguished by, fragrance, taste, and consitency. Ripe, freshly collected, high quality honey at 20°C (68°F) should flow from a knife in a straight stream, without breaking into separate drops.After falling down the honey should form a bead. The honey when poured should form small, temporary layers that dissapear fairly quickly, indicating high viscosity. If not, it indicates excessive water content (over 20%) of the product. Honey with excessive water content is not suitable for long term preservation.

In jars, fresh honey should appear as a pure, consistent fluid and should not set in layers. Within a few weeks to a few months of extraction, many varieties of honey will crystallize and become cream coloured and solid. Some varieties of honey, including tuepelo, acacia, and sage may crystallize less regularly. If transparent and reluctant to thicken, this may indicate that the bees were fed with sugar syrup or even sugar itself, which is bad both for the bees and for the honey they produce. A fluffy film on the surface of the honey (like a white foam), or marble-coloured or white-spotted crystallization on a containers sides, is formed by air bubbles trapped during the bottling process. This is an indication of a high quality honey, which was filled without pasteurization (high-grade heating).Honey may be heated during bottling at temperatures of 104-120°F to delay or inhibit crystallization without degrading the honey. So lack of crystallization is not a definite indicator of excessive heating or pasteurization.

A 2008 Italian study determined that nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopyfructosesucrose, as well as differing levels of aromatic amino acids phenylalaninetyrosine. This ability allows greater ease of selecting compatible stocks.can be used to distinguish between different honey types, and can be used to pinpoint the area where it was produced. Researchers were able to identify differences in acacia and polyfloral honeys by the differing proportions of and and

Source from: http://en.wikipedia.org