Short Essay On Honey

Honey

Honey is defined as a naturally sweet mixture produced by bees and other hymenopteran insects from the nectar of flowers. Honey bees convert nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and evaporation. Honey is usually used in cooking, a direct food intake and also a fermentable source in alcoholic beverages. However, most of the time honey is known for its incredible use as an antiseptic, antioxidant and cleansing properties for our body and health. It offers valuable beauty and skin care tips and amazing healing properties as a head-to-toe home remedy, from eye infection to athlete foot. Honey also has the benefits of healing cuts, cure ailments and diseases, and correct health disorders for generations after generations (Benefits-of-Honey.com).

Adulteration cases of honey

In the early 2000, Chinese beekeepers began using animal-made antibiotics to fight a deadly widespread disease that was killing off tens of millions of bees. One of the antibiotics used is Chloramphenicol which could causes DNA damage in children and is potentially carcinogenic. Although the amount of chloramphenicol found in imported Chinese honey is very little,

However, the main groups of substances in the honey are still similar. The main parts of honey are saccharides, containing 80% of sugar, which is mostly fructose and glucose. Honey is sweeter than table sugar is also due to its high content of fructose. There is also about 18% of water in honey. It is known that the lesser the water content, the better the quality of the honey as fermentation will not occur easily. 2% of the honey is composed of pollen, amino-acid, proteins and minerals. The vitamins present in honey are B6, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid and certain amino acids. The minerals found in honey include calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and zinc