I came across this article that I think you all might
find interesting.  I do not know who wrote it.

Peter

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Is Honey Really a healthful food?

The popular idea that whereas white sugar is bad for
health, honey is good, and whereas white sugar injures
the teeth, honey does not, is quite erroneous.. Honey
is a product of nectar from flowers which has been acted
on by formic acid from a beers organism, and is relatively
poor in minerals in comparison with the acid-forming
tendency of its high sugar content, being a much more
mineral-poor, acid-forming and decalcifying sweetening
agent then unfiltered maple syrup: The writer has known
of cases where misguided persons, giving up sugar, commenced
to use honey liberally, believing that since it was a
"natural"sweet, it was good for them, and could be eaten
freely, even excessively, without ill effects. The result
was that their teeth became decalcified even at a faster
rats than when they used white sugar, which., knowing that
it was bad, they would tend to use more sparingly.

In a certain instance the members of a family of vegetarians
who produced honey and earned their living selling it, and
who, consequently, used it in quantity, found that their
teeth gradually wore away to their roots, which became
abscessed and had to be removed. Honey, being very
acid-forming forms large quantities of carbonic acid in the
blood, without sufficient alkaline minerals to balance it
and hold it in cheek, from attacking the teeth and robbing
them of calcium.

Page 149

For this reason, the free use of honey, like of other
mineral-poor concentrated sweets, gradually destroys the
teeth, especially if used excessively together with an
otherwise acid forming diet.

Use of honey by vegetarians is an anomaly, since honey is
an animal food in the true sense of the word, just as cow's
milk is. The cow eats grass and from it produces a mannary
secretion called milk. The bee takes nectar from a flower
and by adding to it formic acid produced by glands of its body
this formic acid being a sort of "insect milk" forms the
product known an honey. In addition to formic acid, honey
contains manite acid, which interacts with protein, forming
alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid. Thus honey introduces
three acids into the body - formic, manite and carbonic.
This produces acid fermentation in the stomach, leading in
some casts to milder or severer nervous intoxication and
systemic poison. The old Norse, by soaking malt grain in
solution of honey, made an alcoholic beverage named "nyod
(mead ).

Many honeys are toxic due to bees going to flowers with toxic
elements In their nectar. This is especially true when bees
are in the vicinity of trees or plants that have been sprayed
with poisonous insecticides. In East Nepaul, bees turn pollen
of the Rhododendron flower intro a honey that produces a state
of stupor similar to that produced by opium.

Combined with starches, the sugar of honey sets up
fermentation and Gas production. The laxative virtue
ascribed to honey has its basis in this very fermentation,
since the body, as an act of self-preservation, eliminates
through the bowels the toxins and ptomaine's generated by
the mixture of honey with food.

Dr. A. E. Gibson writes: "It is a common popular belief
that honey is A legitimate sweet, and can be used with dietetic
safety where other kinds of sugar are regarded as dangerous.
Honey in combination with other food-stuffs is even move
dangerous than ordinary white sugar."

Healthful Alkaline Sources of Natural Fruit Sugar

There are several excellent substitutes for honey and cane
sugar which Have been imported from the Near East. One of
these is carob or St. John's bread. This is a long, dry
fruit which is available in powdered form or, as a thick
syrup resembling molasses.  In either case there is present
levulose, or fruit sugar, in combination with an abundance
of alkaline minerals. This is one of the finest sweeting agents,
since it is sufficiently rich in minerals to prevent its
highly digestible fruit sugar content from having any
acid-forming or decalcifying effect.

Another sweetening agent now available is Grape Nectar and
Butter Imported from Turkey. These are made entirely from
the juice of organically grown Turkish grapes, which has
been concentrated down to a syrup or a butter consistency.
These products supply pure grape sugar, one of the best of
all sugars, in combination with iron and alkaline minerals,
so that when used as a sweetening agent, there is no harmful,
acid-forming or decalcifying effect, but rather, in addition
to sugar,  valuable minerals and vitamins of the grape are
supplied in concentrated form. (Super-Health thru Organic
Super-Food, Bernard, pgs148,149)

HONEY

POSSIBLE THERAPEUTIC BENEFITS:

. Kills bacteria

. Disinfects wounds and sores

. Reduces perception of pain

. Alleviates asthma

. Soothes sore throats

. Calms the nerves, induces sleep

. Relieves diarrhea

FOLKLORE

Honey was to the ancient Egyptians what aspirin is to modem
medicine: The most popular among drugs. Honey is mentioned
500 times in 900 remedies in the Smith Papyrus, an Egyptian
medical text dating between 2600 and 2200 B.C. The nectar
is universally hailed as an ointment to heal wounds, sores,
and skin ulcers. Honey during wartime has been smeared on
wounds as an antiseptic by ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians,
Assyrians, and Chinese as well as by Germans In World War I.
Hippocrates advised mixing honey, water, and other various
medicinal substances to treat fever.

According to the 1811 edition of The Edinburgh New
Dispensatory "From The earliest ages, honey has been
employed as a medicine . . . it forms an excellent
gargle and facilitates the expectoration of viscid

216

HONEY

217

phlegm; and it is sometimes employed as an emollient
application to abscesses, and as a detergent to ulcers."

Honey is often mixed with lemon juice or vinegar as a
soothing cough syrup. Vermont folk physician D. C. Jarvis
in his best-selling book, Folk Medicine (1958), recommends
honey for coughs, muscle cramps, burns, stuffy nose,
sinusitis, hay fever, bed wetting in children, and insomnia.
"A tablespoon of honey at the evening meal," he says,
makes you look forward to bedtime.

FACTS

Folk medicine is entirely right in dubbing honey a potent killer
of bacteria, an antiseptic, and a disinfectant. Numerous modern
scientists have watched honey-touched bacteria disintegrate. In
one interesting experiment, surgeon and medical historian Guido
Manjo, author of The Healing Hand, tested the formula of a wound
salve from the ancient Egyptian Smith Papyrus; it called for
one-third honey, or byt, mixed with two-thirds fat. He was
apprehensive: "I thought at first that this would be dreadful
stuff to put on an open wound .... Instead, the bacteria in the
fat tended to disappear and when pathogenic bacteria were added,
like Escherichia coli or Staphylococcus aureus, they were killed
just as fast."

HONEY IN THE WOUND

Physicians, especially in developing countries, routinely smear
honey On wounds and sores as a disinfectant ointment, according
to Dr. P. J. Armon, a physician in South Africa. Writing in a
medical journal, he related excellent success in using honey to
treat infected wounds at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center.
The honey, he says, hastens healing and keeps the wound sterile,
eliminating the need for conventional antibiotics.

Indeed, in 1970 a prominent British surgeon surprised colleagues
by announcing that he regularly used honey on open wounds after
vulvectomies (cancer surgery). He found that the honey-covered
wounds healed faster and had less bacterial colonization than
wounds treated with ordinary antibiotics. As confirmation, he
and his colleagues put honey in test tubes with a wide range of
infectious organisms. The honey killed them all.

218

THE FOODS: A MODERN PHARMACOPOEIA

DIARRHEA CURE

Additionally, South African researchers found that honey
squelched the growth of such germs as Salmonella. Shigella, E.
Coli, and V. cholerae, which cause diarrhea, a deadly curse
in the third world. Most important, the honey when eaten
retained its power against bacteria in the intestinal tract,
and helped curb diarrhea.

As an experiment, Drs. I. E. Haffejee and A. Moosa, at the
Department Of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University
of Natal, Durban, South Africa, fed one group of youngsters
with acute gastroenteritis fluids with sugar and another
group fluids with honey. Those with bacteria-caused diarrhea
who got the honey recovered forty percent faster. The researchers'
inescapable conclusion: honey's antibacterial activity in the
intestinal tract helped cure the diarrhea.

How honey disables bacteria is not agreed upon. Some experts say
the Sugar in honey sucks moisture out of bacteria, causing them
to die. But that's not the entire answer, In one test of honey's
antibiotic activity, the sugar was removed. The remaining
sugarless distillate of honey still killed a broad range of
bacteria as effectively as streptomycin did. Additionally, the
germs did not develop a resistance to honey as they did to the
streptomycin.

ASTHMA RATIONALE

It may seem ludicrous that honey could ward off asthma, as the
Ancients claimed. Still, one theory might account for it.
Ingesting traces of pollen found in honey could desensitize you
to allergies the same way pollen injections (allergy slots) do.
But until recently it seemed doubtful that the pollen in honey
would survive digestion to reach the blood stream.

However, a physician, Dr. U. Wahn of the Heidelberg University
Children's Clinic, found that children who drank a pollen
solution showed fewer signs of hay fever and allergy-related
asthma. Seventy allergyprone children drank a solution containing
pollen daily during hay fever season and three times a week in
the winter. Eighty-four percent had fewer allergic symptoms
than usual. Signs of watery eyes and conjunctivitis dropped
by seventy percent and bouts of runny, irritated nose fell
by fifty percent. Researchers concluded that the pollen did
survive digestion and get into the blood stream, somewhat
desensitizing the children to their allergies and asthma. Thus,
eating pollen-laden honey could produce a similar kind of
desensitization to allergies and allergy induced asthma.

HONEY

219

And is there truth to the folk remedy that honey soothes a sore
throat? Dr. Robert I. Henkin, a specialist in taste and smell
disorders at the Georgetown University Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., says yes. For one thing, he notes that sweets
can trigger brain chemicals that dull your perception of pain.

SLEEPING POTION

Honey does tend to calm you down and put you to sleep. In the
body honey is metabolized like table sugar; and it is well
established that sugar leads to more serotonin in the brain,
a chemical that calms down brain activity, inducing
relaxation and sleep, according to experiments at MIT.

CAUTION

Don't feed honey to infants under one year of age, cautions the
Centers for Disease Control. Honey can carry bacterial botulism
spores that germinate in a baby's immature intestine, colonize,
and make a deadly toxin. Although infant botulism cases are
rare-about one hundred were reported in the world in 1986,
possibly one third involving honey-authorities say giving
honey to infants is not worth the risk.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION'S RECIPE
FOR TRAVELER'S DIARRHEA

Fill one glass with eight ounces orange juice, a pinch of table
salt, And 1/2 teaspoon honey. Fill another glass with eight
ounces distilled water and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. Alternate
drinking from each glass.(The Food Pharmacy, Carper, pgs 216-219)