2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29
There is so much history, legends and myths about honey that a whole series of literature can be created about it. Only another natural food can compete with it in terms of history and legends around it. This is cocoa, but honey is the only one we get completely ready.
Everything the bees give us is amazing. The main gift of them - honey, is a universal food and medicine with high efficiency in the treatment and prevention of various diseases. This ability is beyond doubt, it has been recognized all over the world since ancient times.
Honey is a unique creation of bees, which has passed the millennial test for a harmless and effective food product. This is one of the first drugs that man knows. The ancients believed that honey hid in itself mysterious healing powers, so they took it for all diseases of the body. We have no reason to change this idea today.
The history of honey - from ancient times to the present day
Bees have been known to mankind since Neolithic times. It can be said that beekeeping is one of the most ancient human activities. Our ancestors extracted the priceless thick liquid from the hollows and caves in which the wild bees made their hives.
About 10,000 years ago, man first began to extract honey. The value of honey has been valued in prehistoric times and preserved in rock paintings in a number of caves, where our ancestors found shelter.
In ancient China, South America, India and Mesopotamia, 6,000 years ago, honey was used for food and as a universal remedy. In ancient Egypt, the extraction of honey as an occupation was practiced 6,000 years ago. The Sumerians, who inhabited Mesopotamia in the 5th-4th millennium BC, as well as the Arabs later, called honey an elixir and considered it a gift from the gods.
In antiquity in Persia, Rome and Greece used honey and copper products at the embalming of the dead, and next to the mummies of the pharaohs in Egypt they placed a bowl of honey.
In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder encircled the inhabitants of a village in the Apennines, near the river Po, who lived en masse for more than a century because their regular food was honey.
In ancient Greece, the sweet product of bees was called the drink of youth. Pythagoras was convinced that he had reached a dignified age thanks to the fact that he was constantly fed with honey.
Aristotle paid special attention to food and healing properties of honey and reported that it contains strong natural healing properties, as well as many useful substances. We owe to him the first scientifically systematized data on honey and other bee products.
In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer repeatedly mentions honey and pollen. They also played a remarkable role in the ancient Olympic Games, where they were used as food, drink and means to maintain the body and skin during competitions.
All religions indicate honey as a gift from God and recommend it for both food and medicine. And mead is a national drink of many nations. Quite in tune with the understandings of all the ancient peoples sounds the idea of the Promised Land, to which the Israelites took, as a place where rivers of honey and milk flow.
Today, honey and other bee products such as honeycomb, as well as royal jelly, are part of many medicines for various diseases, and the thick liquid with a golden color is still considered one of the most valuable foods on our varied and delicious table..
This remarkable idea in the minds of all people around the world honey owes to its essentially exceptional composition.
Preparation and chemical composition of honey
Honey is produced from nectar that bees collect from the flowers of various plants, flowers and secretions from the living part of each plant in the forest and garden. They collect, transform and combine nectar with substances that they secrete from their glands and leave it to mature into wax cakes.
The resulting liquid is thick, homogeneous, in the form of a syrup or a crystallized sweet product with a pleasant aroma. The less water it contains, the denser a type of honey is. The product may also differ in color and odor. Take manna honey, for example - it is very different from acacia honey.
Honey has a complex composition and all its components are needed by the human body. Of all over 300 substances in its composition, the most important are:
- Sugars - the content is 38 percent fructose, 31 percent glucose and 1 to 3 percent sucrose;
- Proteins - they are from 0, 1 to 2, 3 percent;
- About 20 amino acids - among them are proline, lysine, arginine, aspartic acid, livicin, fryptophan, glutamic acid and many others;
- Salts of the following organic acids: malic, citric, lactic, oxalic, formic, succinic and others;
- Almost all trace elements known in nature - among them iron, phosphorus, manganese, selenium, sodium, sulfur, germanium, tellurium;
- Many vitamins, but in limited quantities - B complex, H, K, C, E, A;
- Enzymes;
- Flavonoids;
- Biogenic stimulants;
- Essential oils;
- Antimicrobial, antifungal, hormonal and other substances;
- Water;
Honey has a caloric value of 315 to 335 kilocalories.
Properties of honey
The rich honey content, based on the medicinal ingredients, has a regenerating, anti-inflammatory, vasodilating, soothing capillaries, antidiabetic effect.
Another part of the ingredients have anticancer and antitumor effects. Honey also has antibacterial, antifungal, antimicrobial properties by stopping the development of these pests and killing them. Pure honey it cannot form mold and this has been known since ancient times. The antimicrobial action of honey is due to the powerful plant antibiotics contained in the pollen from which it is produced. These are phytonutrients. Once in honey, they retain their healing properties.
When we store fruits and vegetables for a long time, the vitamins in them gradually decrease. This does not happen with honey. It keeps its composition unchanged over time. The secret of bees for preserving honey has not been revealed yet. However, it is clear that the content of vitamins increases with increasing amounts of pollen and royal jelly in it, and this increases its health benefits.
Health benefits of honey
Honey, along with other bee products, is considered the most spiritual and magical food on Earth. It is also one of the best superfoods and at the same time a source of concentrated nutrition.
Regular consumption of honey is recommended by all branches of medicine, all national cuisines and all religions. It can be consumed all year round.
Honey prolongs life, in particular the active part of life. It will fill the lack of substances needed by the body - vitamins, minerals, organic acids, phytonutrients and many other biological substances needed by the body will be in balance if honey is consumed regularly.
Feeding the body with the necessary substances leads to normalization of metabolism, increasing resistance to any harmful and dangerous to health microorganisms, viruses and bacteria. This will keep the body physically and mentally healthy and strong.
Honey is a ready-made food that is completely absorbed by the body, is immediately involved in all life processes and strengthens them.
It does not require processing by the digestive system, which makes it difficult, but on the contrary - helps digestion and enhances metabolic processes.
Honey destroys pathogenic flora and parasites in the intestinal tract, increases hemoglobin levels, stops bouts of vomiting and cures constipation.
Something else valuable quality of honey is that it kills all harmful unicellular organisms in the human body.
Significance of honey
Healing, prophylactic substance and real complete food - this is honey for the human body. It helps us maintain our health, youth, energy, ability to work and cheerful mood.
For a long and active life we need a complete and simple, natural food. The ideal offer is honey. It is a living, natural, unprocessed food product that should be at the heart of our menu. Therefore, add it more often, not only to healthy teas, but also to your favorite foods. With it you can garnish fluffy pancakes, patties, homemade waffles. You would also say that the pans and our favorite mekis are not the same without honey.
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