General health matters.

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Daniel Quinn
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#586 Re: General health matters.

Post by Daniel Quinn »

Life is to short to drink coffee without it being sweetened .

I refuse to believe 1/2 teaspoon of honey is harmful
steve s
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#587 Re: General health matters.

Post by steve s »

I agree, I've cut down over the years to one teaspoonfull in tea,, and no plans to change.. I enjoy it.
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#588 Re: General health matters.

Post by jack »

Daniel Quinn wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 9:37 am Life is to short to drink coffee without it being sweetened .

I refuse to believe 1/2 teaspoon of honey is harmful
Honey is exactly the same as any other type of sugar/carbohydrate - it tastes a bit nicer than plain glucose/fructose as it has amino acids and other stuff, but basically it's still just sugar, not a "better sugar" and no different to using cane or beet sugar as far as your body is concerned. Many of the good things in honey are also destroyed above around 60C or so, so apart from tasting nice, a hot honey & lemon drink is mostly just comfort.

This is one of the reasons that as beekeepers we never warm our honey above around 30C, and even then that is only to clear it if it's crystallised - all raw honey will crystallise with time - gentle warming over a few days will liquify it again. It also helps when extracting and filtering honey to have it above 20C as it flows through the SS filters faster.

Commercial honey is a completely different beast. Not the same (unless it's genuinely a "raw" honey).
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Daniel Quinn
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#589 Re: General health matters.

Post by Daniel Quinn »

Apparently it's all adulterated anyhow , still makes coffee taste sublime

60p pot from Aldi last a month . I would be hard pushed to think of a better way of spending 60p
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jack
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#590 Re: General health matters.

Post by jack »

Daniel Quinn wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:39 pm Apparently it's all adulterated anyhow , still makes coffee taste sublime

60p pot from Aldi last a month . I would be hard pushed to think of a better way of spending 60p
Worldwide, honey adulteration is a huge issue. I use a refractometer to check the water content in my own honey to check that it's "ripe", i.e. for normal honey, less than 20%, for heather honey, less than 23% - cooking honey must be less than 25%. Normally my honey is at 18% or less.

The problem is that cheap high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has the same refractive index and thus unless you do extremely expensive spectrographic analysis, you can't tell how the honey is adulterated - a normal refractometer test can't spot adulteration (unless it's been done really badly!). There are some other tests that can tell if adulteration is present, but they're pretty new, not commonly available (I've never seen one), only indicative and give approximate dilutions when a decent control sample is available. There is also a whole load of apocrypha (aka bollocks) on the web about supposedly simple home tests to see if honey is adulterated - none of them are reliable.

This is a massive problem where I lived in the middle east - Omani & Yemeni honey is culturally very important and due to the general lack of forage, it's also pretty scarce and thus VERY expensive - think several 100 dollars a kilo. I know that in Georgia & Armenia, honey is generally pure, likewise in Jordan & Iran. I couldn't travel into Israel at that time as my passport is full of Arab/Islamic (*) country stamps, so a definite no-go.

When something is important, rare and expensive, counterfeiting follows - far more samar and sidr honey (the two main types) is available commercially and sold than is produced. Go figure.

I got my honey directly from the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority (ADFCA) colonies at the al Ain research station (the apiary I helped at), so that was the good stuff, but I never trusted the stuff sold in shops there.

(*) Iranians are not Arabs as they don't (by default) speak Arabic - they speak Farsi.
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steve s
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#591 Re: General health matters.

Post by steve s »

I've a refractometer somewhere, never thought to use it for honey.
they where the standard for measuring soft drink syrups in the 70s and 80's and probably still are.

At the time the ultimate test was taste, by someone well versed in what to taste for.
We used to train people, but most where not very good at identifying issues later..

Not dissimilar to audio...
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#592 Re: General health matters.

Post by simon »

I'm not a big honey lover but had the chance last year to blind taste 5 different honies. 2 were very cheap supermarket honies from e.g. China, a premium supermarket honey, and what turned out to be two different flower season honies from a traditional beekeeper, similar to Jack I suspect.

I was shocked by the difference - I quite liked the pukka stuff but the cheap supermarket jobs from China were pure garbage, like thinner golden syrup. Barely tasted of honey. Yes it was sweet, but so is a bag of Tate and Lyle.
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pre65
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#593 Re: General health matters.

Post by pre65 »

Interesting to get honey facts.

As well as giving up sugar, I'm also giving caffeine a rest, so mainly drinking water from a Britta filter jug.

Got a slight headache already, but it will pass.
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Daniel Quinn
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#594 Re: General health matters.

Post by Daniel Quinn »

I do hope you have some pleasures left pre !
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pre65
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#595 Re: General health matters.

Post by pre65 »

Daniel Quinn wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 6:11 pm I do hope you have some pleasures left pre !
Oh yes, many and various. :wink:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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#596 Re: General health matters.

Post by steve s »

pre65 wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:11 pm .

Got a slight headache already, but it will pass.
That made me laugh phil...
The tube manual is quite like a telephone book. The number of it perfect. It is useful to make it possible to speak with a girl. But we can't see her beautiful face from the telephone number
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#597 Re: General health matters.

Post by pre65 »

steve s wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 8:34 pm
pre65 wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:11 pm .

Got a slight headache already, but it will pass.
That made me laugh phil...
It hasn't been a wasted day if I made you laugh. :)
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#598 Re: General health matters.

Post by Mike H »

Paul Barker wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 8:39 am
Whover fitted you’re laminate floor Mike didn’t match up the pretend grain. Lol.
Yes. I not bovvered, they do the job. :lol:
My big toes nails look worse than yours must have when you had them. But Im hanging on to them as long as I can. At present Im buying time by soaking my feet in bicarbonate of soda 1/2 an hour each morning before work.
Wow, that is ... something .. :shock:
 
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Paul Barker
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#599 Re: General health matters.

Post by Paul Barker »

pre65 wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:11 pm Interesting to get honey facts.

As well as giving up sugar, I'm also giving caffeine a rest, so mainly drinking water from a Britta filter jug.

Got a slight headache already, but it will pass.
Tea and Coffee are a very tough withdrawel at first. But after two weeks of withdrawal you reap the rewards of more energy. Sadly old ladies when I was at British Gas push tea or coffee and biscuits to gas engineers. But I have known the better more energetic life of the no tea no coffee people.

All the talk about sugar…. Carbs are sugar in waiting.

My uncle was a bee keeper and when he was a Prince King Charls sent his aids to come and ask my uncle whose bees were in East London if The Prince could have some honey. To get the benefits of local honey. Obviously Uncle obliged.
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#600 Re: General health matters.

Post by simon »

Paul Barker wrote: Sat Apr 15, 2023 8:09 am All the talk about sugar…. Carbs are sugar in waiting.
Yep. What people often miss is that fruit is essentially sugar too - our bodies don't know the difference between fruit and a bag of sugar. "Eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day" should really be 5 portions of veg a day.
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