While we cannot offer medical advice on the health benefits of honey, there are many ways that honey has been shown to be an anti-inflammatory, and many people with allergies swear by local honey. Consult with your doctor for medically-reviewed details about honey.
According to Stats Canada, Canadians consume about 100,000 pounds of honey per year. Not only is honey consumption going up, but thankfully bee population is on the rise in Canada also.
Whether you’re putting honey in your morning cereal, spreading it on toast for an afternoon snack, or putting a few drops in an evening tea, honey is a natural sweetener with a host of health benefits.
The health benefits of honey can be both long-term and immediate.
Honey is soothing, whether you’re adding some to a warm drink as a cough suppressant, or rubbing some raw honey on a burn to reduce the sting or act as an anti-inflammatory.
In the long term, honey contains natural antioxidants that may reduce the risk of some cancers and help fight infections, and in the short term, it will quickly bring a smile to your face.
Why is it good to eat local honey?
Honey is a product that bees produce all over the world, in fact, over 1 million tons of honey are produced each year worldwide. Mass-produced honey shipped from many areas to a factory, then shipped to distributors, who ship the packaged honey across Canada.
Local honey, like Great Canadian Honey, is from here the Woodstock area, and picked up at a neighbors house in Sweaburg, Ontario, or delivered for free within Oxford County, reducing the length of the shipping process and getting the unpasteurized honey to you directly.
Factories often produce pasteurized honey, bringing the temperature up to a level that will remove natural bacteria, both harmful and helpful, to remove liability for the company.
Our local honey is not raw honey but unpasteurized which means it is heated to an extent to remove harmful bacteria, but not enough to compromise vitamins and minerals.
Local Honey as an aid to allergies
Though the connections are not definitive in medically-reviewed studies, since local honey contains small amounts of bee pollen from local flowers, ingesting some amounts of local honey may increase your resistance to allergies from the same plants that live in your area. These allergy-resistant health benefits are only available through local honey.
Honey is a healthy alternative to processed sugars
Swap out honey in place of sugar in many recipes where the sugar is primarily used as a sweetener – toppings on pound cake, a sweetener in teas and drinks, and glazes are all simple ways to swap local honey for processed sugar.
As a natural sweeter with added health benefits, this easy switch will help you reduce your sugar intake while still enjoying a sweet treat, and supporting the local economy and ecosystem.
