Is Raw Honey Good For You? 50 Benefits of Raw Honey

Did you know that September is National Honey Month?! What better way to celebrate than to put together a big ol’ list of 50 benefits of raw honey!

Before I started eating a real food diet, I thought honey was just honey. I had no idea there was a difference between raw honey and commercial honey. I’ve learned since the amazing benefits of raw honey – in fact, I’d consider it a superfood.

Is Raw Honey Good For You?

Raw honey has A LOT more nutrients, enzymes, and other goodies we’ll get to later. On the other hand, commercial honey is so processed that it’s basically flavored table sugar. Most honey that you buy at the store is processed through pasteurization and filtered. It is not raw honey obviously.

That is because it makes the honey easier to work with for pouring into those cutesy bear bottles and also makes the honey clearer. This processing breaks down the nutrients in the honey as well as kills the beneficial enzymes.

Don’t be fooled by the label though! The term “raw” is not regulated and therefore can be put on any form of honey the supplier sees fit.

The honey that I’m talking about is 100% unfiltered, unpasteurized, tasty raw honey. Raw honey consists of about 35-40 percent fructose and 30-35 percent dextrose along with 17-20 percent water and traces of pollen, wax, acids, proteins, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and pigments. As you can see raw honey is much more than just sugar!

If you can buy local, that is your best type of raw honey to buy (your local honey contains local pollen, a great way to develop resistance to allergies). If I didn’t have a local option I would get Nature Nature’s honey off Amazon. They won’t break the bank like some brands and you can do subscribe and save!

Just for kicks, here are some quick raw honey facts for your reading pleasure.

• Bees are the only only insect that produces food eaten by man.
• Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water. It’s the only food that contains “pinocembrin”, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
• Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their sense of smell is so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from meters away.
• A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
• The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
• A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
• A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
• The queen bee can live up to 5 years and its role is to fill the hive with eggs. She lays up to 2500 eggs per day.
• Each honey bee colony has a unique odor for members’ identification.
• If the bee disappeared from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.

Now on to our list of 50 benefits of raw honey!

And just to let you know I have not tried all of these benefits of raw honey and no I am not a doctor. Don’t go off your meds just because you see something in an infographic. Talk to your medical professionals first and do your research!