Honey - Words To The Wise

Honey - Words To The Wise


TODAY honey does not have the significancy which it enjoyed for thousands of years. It was forced into the background upon the intrusion of refined sugar in the middle of the eighteenth century. This is a regrettable error. It would greatly benefit humanity if honey could be restored to the rank which it occupied in antiquity and physicians, above all, should help the good cause. The modern housewife uses "honey" only . . . as a word, when she is anxious to have a new fur coat, an automobile or jewelry.

Honey is physiological sugar and not a counterfeit. Through the prodigious genius of Nature, through a wonderful cycle, the energy of the sun is preserved in the nectar and pollen of, flowers, and is liberated when honey is eaten. The influence of ultraviolet rays on sugar, imparting inhibitive power against the growth of various bacteria, yeasts and molds, is also conveyed to honey, which may be one of the reasons that it has such distinct anti-septic and antifermentative qualities. Pollen, which honey contains, even though by accidental admixture, is the procreative germ, the endocrine of plant-life, and is transmitted into the human body when honey is consumed. The newest discoveries in biochemistry emphasize that quantity is not essential to produce effects. Honey is reasonable in price, is more nutritious than many other foods, for instance, butter, and keeps almost indefinitely.

Honey ought to have more attention in feeding not only the healthy but invalids and infants. Honey behooves the well and the ill: it is a good, practical and delicious food, the source of the oldest and most salubrious drinks and an excellent remedial agent. Honey conserves health and also restores health. It is more than a plain sweet. There are treasures buried in honey, yet undiscovered by science. The ancients compared it with molten gold. Many diseases, which never follow the consumption of honey, could be avoided by using honey instead of resorting to the indiscriminate, though admittedly more comfortable, substitution of sugar. When will people wean themselves, for instance, from the corrupt habit of "sugaring" their coffee, tea and other beverages? By right every family and restaurant table should be provided with a handy drip-cut pitcherful of honey to sweeten coffee, tea, grape-fruit, berries, salads, pancakes, etc., and to make it possible for anyone to take occasionally a glassful of hot water-honey mixture to promote a free flow of bile and induce gastric and intestinal activity.

There are, of course, a few people with whom honey does not agree. They will experience a griping soon after its consumption. This is due to the high hygroscopic property of the sub-stance, which readily absorbs gastric and intestinal fluids. The thirst which one feels after consuming honey is due to this circumstance, or rather advantage, because if the craving for water is gratified the system benefits by it. Diluting honey with water or mixing it with other foods will, at times, prevent such griping.

The thirst produced by the consumption of honey with the urge to drink more water is extremely important. The average per-son does not drink sufficient water. The human system requires daily about two and one-half quarts of liquid. Water, besides being a regulator of body temperature, is an important vehicle for removing waste products. Seventy per cent of the body weight consists of water and any loss must be replaced.

Certain individuals have an idiosyncrasy for honey. They can-not eat even the smallest amount. This is often an allergic condition, that is, they are honey-sensitized, like people who suffer from hay fever or asthma are sensitized to certain pollens which produce these conditions. Some people can eat extracted honey but not comb-honey and can not approach bee-materials, such as frames, combs, etc., without provoking an asthmatic attack. There are people who are sensitive to honey from one State and can eat honey from another State without trouble. Certain people can not tolerate buckwheat or sage honey but any other type agrees with them. In general, sensitivity toward honey is very rare and is least common among all food allergies. It is best for these few victims to leave honey alone.

Sugar consumption has increased in the United States during the last half century by 500%. While 100 years ago the daily per capita industrial sugar consumption represented 45 calories, today it has increased to 550 calories, that is, about twelve times. As the daily requirement of an average individual is approximately 2500 calories, commercial sugar supplies one-fifth of the total. This amount is far beyond the mark, because it encroaches on the scope of calories to be supplied by starches, fats, animal and vegetable proteins and, last but not least, by more beneficial simple sugars. It is not surprising that obesity is on the increase. Uncle Sam will soon lose his lanky figure and acquire the paunch of John Bull. The daily candy expenditure of the United States is well over a million dollars.

Alfred W. McCann thought that America had become a nation of "sugar-hogs." In 1830 the annual per capita consumption was 71/2 pounds; in 1870—23 pounds; in 1918—89 pounds and in 1926-120 pounds. During prohibition years sugar consumption greatly increased, not only because there was a demand for a substitute "pick up," but also because most breweries converted their facilities into candy and chocolate factories, and manufactured soft drinks. Since the repeal of the Prohibition Act the yearly sugar consumption has decreased twelve pounds per capita. To-day it is about one hundred and eight pounds. Each man, woman or child in the United States consumes about one-third of a pound; that is, about a teacupful of sugar a day. According to the 1919 statistics this amount was distributed as follows :

• 80% home consumption
• 10% by confectioners
• 6% by bakeries
• 3% in soft drinks
• 1% in tobacco and chewing gum

The United States is the "sweetest" country in the world. (If this has two meanings, both are correct!) While the entire world consumes forty billion pounds of sugar yearly, the consumption in the United States alone is ten billion pounds. The regrettable part is that most of it is imported. All the sweetening could be sup-plied by domestic honeys and there would be no need of one hundred and eight pounds of sugar per capita, because honey satiates more quickly than sugar. The person who will succeed in inventing a process of putting honey in cube or powder form will prove to be the greatest benefactor of humanity. The hygroscopic, that is, the water absorbing quality of honey will, how-ever, place an almost unsurmountable obstacle in his way. (Dr. Bevan mentions in The Honey Bee that the Jews of Moldavia and the Ukraine prepare from honey a sort of sugar, which is solid and as white as snow. They expose honey in a vessel, which is a bad conductor of calories, to frost for three weeks, in a place where neither sun nor snow can reach it. By this process the honey, without being congealed, becomes clear and hard like candy. They send it to the distilleries at Danzig.)

Sweets, coffee and tea remain, so far, our best stimulants. They are less harmful than alcohol, especially if this is taken in excess. In 1918, during the World War the sugar rations of the A. E. F. were increased 100% and coffee, 50%, to supply the soldiers with much-needed energy. In ancient times, warriors used honey for this purpose. Honey, of course, will bestow more benefit during the winter months.

It is singular that the population of the United States, considering the excellent nutritive, tonic and protective value of honey, has not as yet become honey-conscious. There is no other country in the world where the public is more interested in health and, of course, in diet problems than in America. Innumerable books are published on the subject and there is an endless list of health magazines. The daily papers have their columns on physical culture and diet; there are free lectures; and colleges, schools, commercial and industrial organizations, federal, state and community health officials vie in giving health suggestions.

Officials of circulating libraries will tell you that more books are read on health than on any other topic. The books plainly show the wear and tear.

A remarkable fact in modern literature, as already mentioned, is that honey is so sadly neglected, though it is the end-purpose of apiculture. In textbooks, honey is treated more from a technical viewpoint, namely, how to produce as much honey as possible. The same comment applies to foreign literature. The writer has found the lengthy chapter on honey in the ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, edited by E. R. Root, the most exhaustive and important treatise on the subject.

Though there is an old proverb that "good wine needs no bush," yet the American Honey Institute uses its best efforts to popularize the sale and a more widespread use of honey. The lack of interest and the apparent opposition of the medical profession, of course, entails a tremendous handicap. Several years ago a pamphlet appeared, written by E. R. Root, the Editor of Gleanings in Bee Culture, entitled Honey as Food, but indorse-ment by the Committee on Foods of the American Medical Association was refused because they considered it "an offense to honest advertising." The booklet was a compilation of actual and valuable statements about honey by eminent physicians, many of them university professors, chiefs of health, food, nutrition departments and hospitals; excerpts from outstanding medical journals, etc., but the learned Board considered it a "hodgepodge of misinformation concerning `alleged' (the quotation marks are the author's) values of honey." (Journ. Am. Med. Assn., June 23, 1934).

Among the "misinformers" whose statements were quoted in the pamphlet, we find the following names:

• Dr. E. P. Joslin, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
• Dr. F. G. Banting, the discoverer of insulin
• Dr. B. P. Hawk, Professor of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia
• Dr. C. H. English, Medical Director of the Lincoln National Life Ins. Co.
• Dr. G. N. W. Thomas, of Edinburgh (Lancet, 207: 1924) Dr. W. G. Sackett, Bacteriologist, Colorado Experiment Station.
• Dr. H. E. Barnard, Food Chemist of the American Honey Institute
• Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Battle Creek Sanitarium
• Dr. Arnold Lorand, internationally known physician and author
• Dr. Paul Luttinger, Pediatrist
• Dr. Clarence W. Leib, author of Eat, Drink and be Healthy Sir Henry Baldwin, King George Fifth's dentist
• Dr. Leonard Williams, London, author of The Science and Art of Living and others.

The erudite Committee, however, accepted and approved one suggestion of the pamphlet about the usefulness of honey as an antifreeze in automobile radiators,* as "probably the most en-lightening paragraph of the entire leaflet." Needless to say the Council exceeded its authority in regard to automobiles, inasmuch as they have no dictatorial rights as yet in such matters. The flippant and ill-disposed argument certainly did not benefit the cause of honey. (Luckily the pamphlet omitted to mention another novel use of honey, that of filling golf balls, otherwise, very likely, the golf balls would have obtained commendation and honey, another stroke.)

Of course, the acceptance of honey by the medical profession as a protective and curative substance and their indorsement would create pandemonium not only in medical circles but among pharmaceutical chemists, wholesale and retail druggists, radio announcers, even undertakers, not to mention the sugar refining companies, the candy manufacturers and retailers, soda counters, etc. It would be a veritable economic catastrophe. The sale of laxative remedies (it would be interesting to know their number), digestive and headache powders, bicarbonate of soda, enema bags, and rectal suppositories might entirely stop. To these we may add sedatives, various cough remedies, expectorants, throat lozenges, gargles, etc. The external use of honey would make a dent in the sale of antiseptics and have influence even on the cosmetic counters.

The wide use of honey would also cripple surgical practice be-cause hemorrhoid, gastric ulcer, gall bladder, appendicitis, tonsil and many other operations would greatly decline or entirely dis-appear, not considering the moral effect which the recollection of former unnecessary operations would cast on discredited surgery.