15th August 2012
By Sayer Ji
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
Honey, unlike almost everything else we consume in our diet, was intended solely to be a form of nourishment – albeit, for the bees. Only milk, to my knowledge, shares this singular biological imperative. But honey is far more than a source of sweetness and quick energy within the human diet.
It has profound medicinal applications, some of which are as follows:
Feeds the good bacteria
It is a little-known fact that bees have a diverse population of beneficial lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in their honey crop, the bulge between the esophagus and the gizzard of the bee. In fact, according to newly published research in PLoS, “studies of LAB in all extant honeybee species plus related apid bees reveal one of the largest collections of novel species from the genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium ever discovered within a single insect and suggest a long (>80 mya) history of association.” [i] Indeed, raw honey feeds good bacteria. It has been experimentally demonstrated in in vitro (petri dish) conditions to increase the number of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus plantarum counts 10-100 foldcompared with sucrose. [ii]
