Good Quality Honey

For general people usually very difficult for choosing a good quality honey, even have compared with the genuine honey. Many disingenuous merchant sell mixed honey, but they said that their honey is pure. Good quality honey can function as medicine, but this is depend on the honey source.
When you navigating through the maze of all the different honey in the shops, you look out for certain specific information to ensure that the honey I buy is value for money. Good quality honey, that is, honey of value can be judged by five key factors, namely:

1. Water content
2. HMF(Hydroxymethylfurfural)
3. Inverted sugars
4. Impurities
5. Colour

Good quality honey essentially has low water content. Honey is likely to ferment if the water content of honey is greater than 19%. The reason is that all unpasteurized honey contains wild yeasts. Due to the high sugar concentration, these yeasts will pose little risk in low moisture honey because osmosis will draw sufficient water from the yeast to force them into dormancy. In honey that has a higher proportion of water, the yeast may survive and cause fermentation to begin in storage.

HMF is a break-down product of fructose (one of the main sugars in honey) formed slowly during storage and very quickly when honey is heated. The amount of HMF present in honey is therefore used as a guide to storage guide to storage length and the amount of heating which has taken place.

High levels of HMF (greater than 100 mg/kg) can also be an indicator of adulteration with inverted sugars. Cane sugar (sucrose) is "inverted" by heating with a food acid, and this process creates HMF. Many food items sweetened with high fructose corn syrups, e.g. carbonated soft drinks, can have levels of HMF up to 1,000 mg/kg.

For most consumers, good quality honey is expected to be visually free of defect -- clean and clear. Honey which has very high pollen content appears cloudy.

Honey defined by color graded into light, amber, and dark categories which do not really have any bearing on quality. Some of the most distinctively and strongly flavored honey varieties, such as basswood, are very light, while very mild and pleasant honeys such as tulip poplar can be quite dark.

Honey Functions

Honey as medicine has been used human since the past 2,500 years. Honey as traditional medicine has been used in many countries and also mention on the Holly Qur’an that is a good for medicine. The numerous health benefits of honey have made it an important aspect of traditional medicines. Scientists are also researching the benefits of honey in modern medicine, especially its benefit in healing wounds. In Chinese honey source differ from the kind of bee that can cure better for certain diseases.

There is hardly any region in the world where honey is not cherished. Honey is also known as Honig in German, Miele in Italian, Miel in French, Miel in Spanish, Miel in Portuguese, мед in Russian, Honing in Dutch, Honey in Australia and μελι in Greek.

As medicine, honey will have no effected to other medicine and can be mixed with other medicine to drink, but for chemical medicine can have bad effect if mixed with other medicine.

The health benefits of honey include the following:

• Sweetener: Sugar can be substituted with honey in many food and drinks. Honey contains about 69% glucose and fructose enabling it to be used as a sweetener.
• Energy Source: Honey is also used by many as a source of energy as it provides about 64 calories per tablespoon. One tablespoon of sugar will give you about 50 calories. Further the sugars in honey can be easily converted into glucose by even the most sensitive stomachs. Hence it is very easy to digest honey.
• Weight Loss: Though honey has more calories than sugar, honey when consumed with warm water helps in digesting the fat stored in your body. Similarly honey and lemon juice and honey and cinnamon help in reducing weight.
• Improving Athletic Performance: Recent research has shown that honey is an excellent organic aids and help boosting the performance of athletes. Honey facilitates in maintaining blood sugar level, muscle recuperations and glycogen restoration after a workout.
• Source of Vitamins and Minerals: Honey contains a variety of vitamins and minerals. The vitamin and mineral content of honey depends on the type of flowers used for agriculture.
• Antibacterial and Antifungal Properties: Honey has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and hence it can be used as a natural antiseptic.
• Antioxidants: Honey contains therapeutically, which are effective in removing free radicals from our body. As a result, our body immunity is improved.

Skin Care with Milk and Honey: Milk and honey are often served together as both these ingredients help in getting a smooth soothing skin. Hence consuming milk and honey daily in the morning is a common practice in many countries.

Honey by Definition

Veganism is a way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom, and includes a reverence for life. It applies to the practice of living on the products of the plant kingdom to the exclusion of flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey, animal milk and its derivatives, and encourages the use of alternatives for all commodities derived wholly or in part from animals (Stepaniak).

Any definition of veganism would talk about not exploiting animals, and honeybees (Apis mellifera) are, without a doubt, animals. Honeybees are in the phylum Arthropoda--the same as lobsters and crabs. So in addition to crustaceans, if honeybees don't merit respect, that would also leave earthworms vulnerable to dissection in biology classes. Similarly, iscallops, snails, and oysters would be fair game--they are not as "high up" on the evolutionary scale as bees. James and Carol Gould (respectively, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton and a full-time science writer) point out that "Honey bees are at the top of their part of the evolutionary tree, whereas humans are the most highly evolves species on our branch. To look at honeybees, then, is to see one of the two most elegant solutions to the challenges of life on our planet. More interesting, perhaps, than the many differences are the countless eerie parallels—convergent evolutionary answers to similar problems". Of course, all this talk of higher and lower is fiction. Even Darwin reminded himself to "Never use the words higher and lower".