Is Cooking Honey Unhealthy?

Laurentine ten Bosch LAURENTINE TEN BOSCH

Switching to honey from refined sweeteners is a common first step for many who seek to improve their diet and overall health. This would include baking and cooking honey for recipes used in the home.

Certainly, honey is a most traditional superfood that is praised in ancient texts and a component of numerous traditional diets from around the world. Modern science has verified the health benefits of consuming honey as it contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics (Lactobacillus kunkeei), enzymes, antioxidants, and some amino acids.

Honey in its raw state is also helpful used on the skin and as medicine due to its potent anti-microbial properties that make it useful as a natural antibiotic.

Those who use honey generally seem to understand that it is best to seek it in an unheated (raw) state to obtain maximum benefits. However, what most do not know is that cooking honey or baking with it – even simply adding honey to hot liquids causes negative chemical changes to this ancient food. In fact, consuming honey that has been heated or cooked in any manner actually can contribute to ill health particularly of the digestive system.

Read the rest of this article at The Healthy Home Economist

What are your thoughts on cooking with honey? What other sweeteners do you use?