Sunday, October 25, 2009

Honey, another form of health insurance?

Typically, Americans labor hard to avoiding paying taxes, spending time fearing their god and swallowing heaps of vitamin pills. Since we're naturalized, we act a bit differently on some of these counts and specifically, don't take any vitamin supplements. It's probably because we believe that if we eat balanced meals and prefer natural foods to processed ones, we don't need to compensate. This doesn't prevent us however from suffering of allergies and that's the only time we might be looking for some outside help.

One of my very best friends, Denys Trombert, who lives in France and is a beekeeper himself, has recommended that we followed his habit of ingesting one teaspoon of honey everyday to fight allergies as long as the honey came from plants and flowers that grow in the area where we live. My personal research shows that there's debate as to whether honey is that effective against allergies; however, a recent study has shown pollen collected by bees will exert some anti allergenic effect. There are also many other medicinal virtues attributed to that golden delicacy; for at least 2700 years, it's been used by humans to treat a variety of ailments through topical application.

Honey, which contains two invert sugars, offers also many benefits as a food substance; while cane-sugar and starches must undergo a process of inversion during digestion, honey doesn't because it's been predigested by the bees, inverted and concentrated. This saves our stomach some additional labor. There are many other properties that sound good about this particular food, and I'll save mine for last; since the state of Utah is nicknamed “the Beehive State,” the least we can do is eat a daily dose of honey...

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