Lots of honey is obviously good for you

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mbc

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I found this fascinating. (All taken from an anthropologist's twitter feed)

Government departments frequently publish dietary guidelines. But many hunter-gatherers & forager-farmer diets violate Western guidelines yet they have healthier hearts & much less chronic illness.

Here are 3 well-studied examples:

1. Kitavans of Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea)

In 1990, Staffan Lindeberg spent several months w/ the Kitavans, observing their diet, physical activity, & daily habits. He also measured a slew of health & physiological variable for ~170 adults. Lindeberg found that 70% of the Kitavan's calories came from carbs (e.g., fruits, yams, sweet potato, taro) & ~17% from saturated fat (coconut oil), both in excess of US and UK health authority guidelines. Yet he observed no diabetes & "cardiovascular disease was virtually nonexistent”.

2. Tsimane of Bolivian Amazon

Since 2002, the diet, health, behavior, & life history of 1000s of Amazonian forager-farmers has been studied by a range of anthropologists in what is the most detailed study of health in a small-scale non-industrial society. Like the Kitavans, the Tsimane eat too many carbs by US and UK guidelines standards: ~65% of calories are from starchy cultigens (e.g., rice, manioc, plantains) + more come from other fruit. They also consume ~300 mg calcium/day — far less than typical Western recommendations of >1000 mg/day. Despite the carbs & very low calcium, the Tsimane are medical marvels compared to Westerners. They have hardly any fatty liver disease, brains that atrophy much more slowly with age, & the lowest levels of coronary artery disease ever recorded in a population.

3. Hadza of Tanzania.

Anthropologists have conducted detailed studies of Hadza hunter-gatherers, collecting valuable data on health, diet, & behavior. Most striking about the Hadza diet is the quantity of simple sugars in the form of honey. >60% of Hadza calories come from honey some months. On average, the Hadza seem to get ~400 calories from honey/day — vastly exceeding western guidelines. Despite all the honey, of 192 Hadza people studied, only 2 (barely) qualified as overweight and one (barely) qualified as obese. There is also no evidence at all of type II diabetes. Of 20 people checked, none had fasting blood glucose levels >85 mg/dL (diabetes is >125 mg/dL).

Why the lack of cardiac & metabolic disease among foragers & forager-farmers? There are many possibilities: More fiber, less salt, more exposure to pathogens, more activity. But honestly, we don’t know. We still struggle to understand why industrialized lifestyles carry such health risks.

But we know that the chronic disease, cancer and illness seems primarily to be a feature of industrial society.
 
Interesting but is it diet and less processed food or could not living in houses, driving cars and living sedentary lifestyles also have an impact?
 
I found this fascinating. (All taken from an anthropologist's twitter feed)

Government departments frequently publish dietary guidelines. But many hunter-gatherers & forager-farmer diets violate Western guidelines yet they have healthier hearts & much less chronic illness.

Here are 3 well-studied examples:

1. Kitavans of Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea)

In 1990, Staffan Lindeberg spent several months w/ the Kitavans, observing their diet, physical activity, & daily habits. He also measured a slew of health & physiological variable for ~170 adults. Lindeberg found that 70% of the Kitavan's calories came from carbs (e.g., fruits, yams, sweet potato, taro) & ~17% from saturated fat (coconut oil), both in excess of US and UK health authority guidelines. Yet he observed no diabetes & "cardiovascular disease was virtually nonexistent”.

2. Tsimane of Bolivian Amazon

Since 2002, the diet, health, behavior, & life history of 1000s of Amazonian forager-farmers has been studied by a range of anthropologists in what is the most detailed study of health in a small-scale non-industrial society. Like the Kitavans, the Tsimane eat too many carbs by US and UK guidelines standards: ~65% of calories are from starchy cultigens (e.g., rice, manioc, plantains) + more come from other fruit. They also consume ~300 mg calcium/day — far less than typical Western recommendations of >1000 mg/day. Despite the carbs & very low calcium, the Tsimane are medical marvels compared to Westerners. They have hardly any fatty liver disease, brains that atrophy much more slowly with age, & the lowest levels of coronary artery disease ever recorded in a population.

3. Hadza of Tanzania.

Anthropologists have conducted detailed studies of Hadza hunter-gatherers, collecting valuable data on health, diet, & behavior. Most striking about the Hadza diet is the quantity of simple sugars in the form of honey. >60% of Hadza calories come from honey some months. On average, the Hadza seem to get ~400 calories from honey/day — vastly exceeding western guidelines. Despite all the honey, of 192 Hadza people studied, only 2 (barely) qualified as overweight and one (barely) qualified as obese. There is also no evidence at all of type II diabetes. Of 20 people checked, none had fasting blood glucose levels >85 mg/dL (diabetes is >125 mg/dL).

Why the lack of cardiac & metabolic disease among foragers & forager-farmers? There are many possibilities: More fiber, less salt, more exposure to pathogens, more activity. But honestly, we don’t know. We still struggle to understand why industrialized lifestyles carry such health risks.

But we know that the chronic disease, cancer and illness seems primarily to be a feature of industrial society.

Is it because they are/were treatment-free? ;)
 
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The Dark Horse Podcast is quite nice to listen to on occasion. Both evolutionary biologists.
They were recently talking about how we don't know the impact of any of modern life's intrusions.
Man has spent many thousands of years getting used to looking at the light from fire, but today how many leds are on in our bedroom all night, so it's never really dark?
With all the processed foods etc that are regarded as normal, no one will know for a long time what the effects are especially with the money involved in the status quo. Western calcium dietary recommendations are an oddity considering how much of the world doesn't include much dairy in their adult diet. A non processed diet seems a good thing to aim at but not easy for many.
According to Andrew Whitley in his book Bread Matters if chemicals used in the baking process are deemed to be used up in that process then they don't need to be on the consumers ingredient list, so even something as "basic" as shop bought bread you don't know what you're eating.
 
What really interested me was the lack of diabetes in the Hadza where up to 60% of their calories in the summer months comes from honey.
We should make much of this as another string to our marketing bow imho.
 
I have a customer in his eighties who is convinced he's not caught covid thanks to the honey, his daughter lives with him and caught covid at work. He has a group of his neighbours onboard and is constantly telling us we should increase our price. We get a nice regular order from them so I've offered to show him the bees, he'll love that.
 
What really interested me was the lack of diabetes in the Hadza where up to 60% of their calories in the summer months comes from honey.
We should make much of this as another string to our marketing bow imho.

You must be put into jail with your wisdom. Diabetes is not a joke.
 
What really interested me was the lack of diabetes in the Hadza where up to 60% of their calories in the summer months comes from honey.
We should make much of this as another string to our marketing bow imho.
Isn’t the metabolic response to honey different to that of refined sugar?
 
Isn’t the metabolic response to honey different to that of refined sugar?

Refined sugar will presumably be sucrose rather than fructose and glucose, so there's an extra step there that the body has to make to break the sucrose down into fructose and glucose, but from that point on it's not immediately obvious why there should be a different response after that has happened. Of course the fact that the sucrose molecule has to be split in the first place may result in a different response.

Another variable is that honey can have significantly varying proportions of fructose and glucose depending on the source whereas refined sugar appears to be roughly half and half. A quick search online suggests that fructose has a much lower GI than glucose and that fructose may result in reduced blood glucose levels.

Could it perhaps be that honey that crystallises fast because of a high glucose content is worse (from a diabetic's point of view) than honey that doesn't due to a high fructose content?

James
 
Isn’t the metabolic response to honey different to that of refined sugar?

In diabetes 2 sugar level is high. It makes many malfunctions into the body. You are really tired. Your legs get by itself open woulds, which do not heal. Your toes loose nerve systems.

In covid diabetes patients are in biggest danger to die.

In honey sugars are same sugar as in normal sugar. When you eate starch, it will be splitted to glucose.

Fructose is as bad, because the body knows that glucose level is high, and it commands that turn fructose at once to the fat.

I have had diabetes now 5 years. I take 3 medicin. Last December I got a new medicine which dropped the sugar level to. Open woulds healed in toes healed after being open open a half year.

When a beekeepers starts to become a witch doctor, you are playing dangerous game. Normal medicine doctor study 7 years, and he..she does not know enough what to do with high sugar level. A witch doctor reads one article about jungle, and he isfully educated.

Do you know that Chinese people have most diabetes in the world and India is second.
 
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Maybe the real key is that they only have this high honey intake for a few months per year..... What do they eat the rest of the time? As Dr Pradip Jamnadas has pointed out several times In his various YouTube appearances, there are local communities living on seemingly very unhealthy diets all over the world but the key is in what they're not eating (highly processed foods) combined with overall lifestyle.

Hoping your average Brit could copy any one of those diets without totally changing their entire approach to food and life in general is asking for disaster.
 
When the UK wants to take care of diabetes, and its 4 million diabetes people, it hardly goes Hadza village to see, what those 400 people eate. It is well known that main reason is obesity. The diabetes cost of the UK is 8 billion £ / year. And there is no slightest sign that somebody try to care the disease with honey.
 
Refined sugar will presumably be sucrose rather than fructose and glucose, so there's an extra step there that the body has to make to break the sucrose down into fructose and glucose,

Could it perhaps be that honey that crystallises fast because of a high glucose content is worse (from a diabetic's point of view) than honey that doesn't due to a high fructose content?

James

When body breaks sucrose to glucose and fructose, it is not extra step. It is called digestion of food. Many kind of starch resources will be splitted into glucose, before it goes into blood circulation.

Honey does not have much meaning in daily food calories or in obesity in the UK.
 
When the UK wants to take care of diabetes, and its 4 million diabetes people, it hardly goes Hadza village to see, what those 400 people eate. It is well known that main reason is obesity. The diabetes cost of the UK is 8 billion £ / year. And there is no slightest sign that somebody try to care the disease with honey.
It's not about treating diabetes, it's about having the correct information to make a sensible RDA (recommended daily allowance) so that informed consumers can make appropriate choices.
 
It's not about treating diabetes, it's about having the correct information to make a sensible RDA (recommended daily allowance) so that informed consumers can make appropriate choices.

Yeah. It is forbidden to sell honey with healthy arguments. Is that correct information?
 

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