Debate over whether it can be heated bee product, have been going on in the world for a long time, but many people still have different opinions on this matter. Let's find out whether it is possible to heat honey at all, and if not, then why?
The concept of “heating honey” sounds quite unnatural. First of all, because the naturalness of this product without any processing is what makes it so useful and healing for many people. However, there are times when the sweet mass has to be heated one way or another, for example, when added to warm tea. So, let's find out to what temperature this medicinal sweetness can be heated.
Scientists say that honey should not be heated above 40 degrees, as it supposedly loses its beneficial properties. unique properties. But what about in the summer? Is it really impossible to leave it indoors, but do you have to hide the sweetness in the cellar?
In principle, there will be no big problem if you leave honey on the windowsill in the summer and it gets warm. But it is better to avoid such situations. Store the product so that it does not freeze or melt, this will be enough (within 14-28 degrees).
By the way, it’s not only high temperatures that change the structure of the treat. Freezing or a very low positive mark affects the quality of bee gold in a similar, negative way. In the cold it will also lose its usefulness.
Is it true that when heated it turns into poison?
At high temperatures, specific enzymes and sugars are destroyed in honey, and the carcinogen hydroxymethylfurfural is also produced. Such destruction natural structure, according to most scientists, turns into poison nutritious product, because the resulting carcinogen is very dangerous for the stomach.
However, not all heating harms the honey mass. For example, if the product needs to be made softer, it is recommended to place it in closed jar into a saucepan with water heated to 40 degrees. This method will make the mass softer and more flexible, and nothing terrible will happen.
Does it lose its beneficial and medicinal qualities when heated?
Yes, definitely, with high heat or melting, honey loses the lion's share of its medicinal qualities and turns into a simple, sweet, but useless syrup. The whole benefit of a bee gift lies in eating it alive, healthy, without the slightest heat treatment.
If you put the delicacy in a cooled room temperature tea, then everything will be fine. There is another option - drink tea with honey, simply washing it down rather than dissolving it in liquid. This method of use will preserve medicinal properties product and useful qualities.
Why you can’t heat the product: what are the dangers?
So, we found out why you can’t heat honey too much. This leads to the destruction of sugars and the production of a carcinogen dangerous to the human stomach, namely the poison hydroxymethylfurfural. In addition to the fact that the product becomes unsafe when melted, it also loses all its usefulness.
Heating destroys the naturally structured fructose and glucose, and honey becomes ordinary syrup, and almost completely loses its wonderful aroma. However, in a warm liquid whose temperature is below 40 C, for example, in herbal tea or warm water, you can dissolve it.
Thus, an overheated delicacy is no longer honey, but a source of carbohydrates that are quickly absorbed by the body, but will this be beneficial? Surely not. Therefore, in the future, before throwing the bee product into boiling water or reheating it when it hardens, think about why not use it in natural form. Is it worth preparing a beautiful, flowing, but useless mass using heat, if even in candied form it will bring you great benefits?!
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: 1. honey loses its properties and 2. when heated, hydroxymethylfurfural is formed in honey, and drinking such tea is dangerous. Unfortunately, these allegations are widespread. But fortunately, there are other arguments which have been confirmed by more than one study. Below are excerpts from the book “The Word about Honey” by V.A. Straw.
So, regarding the first reason: When heated, honey loses its properties: “I was a categorical supporter of this use of our favorite product. Of course, the recommendations were confirmed by the results of research by reputable scientists:
t> 60º C - intensive destruction of proteins, vitamins, enzymes, enzymes and other biological substances occurs active substances
t> 60º C - intensive destruction of enzymes occurs, etc.
If you look at the data without hesitation, we can say that you should not put honey in tea. It's "without thinking." But if you really think about it. Because the no one has researched this, let's "think" together. Here are the results basic research J.White, 1993:
at 30º WITH in 200 days
at 60º WITH- the amount of honey diastase is reduced by half in 1 day
at 80º WITH - in 1.2 hours
If add honey to tea at a temperature 80º C, That in 72 minutes its enzymatic activity will decrease only half, and at 60º C the same thing will happen in 1 day. Do we really drink a cup of tea all day or even an hour? At the same time, the temperature of the tea is not constant, it tends to decrease, and after 15 minutes the tea in the glass becomes cold.
And now about loss of aroma...Where does he get lost, and even intensely, while drinking tea? Aromatic That's why the substances are aromatic, to fly out of honey and captivate the consumer with its scent tea. Let them fly out and fill the room with their aromas...
You can drink tea with honey!
Regarding the second reason: When heated, hydroxymethylfurfural is formed in honey, and drinking such tea is dangerous.
In honey, the main source of hydroxymethylfurfural is fructose. Standard limits the permissible content of hydroxymethylfurfural 1 kg of honey - 25 mg. In EU standards and UN Food Code the maximum content has been established hydroxymethylfurfural in honey 40 mg/kg, for honeys, produced in hot countries, this value rises to 80 mg/kg.
According to materials from the Bremen Institute for Honey Research, “confectionery products and jams contain hydroxymethylfurfural in quantities tens of times, and in many cases significantly more than the permissible standard for honey. To date, no harm to the human body has been identified from this."
Professor Chepurnoy says about this: “There are food products, in which the content of hydroxymethylfurfural is tens of times higher, but in them it is not even detected. For example, in roasted coffee its content can reach 2000 mg/kg. In drinks, 100 mg/l is allowed. IN Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola its content can reach 300-350 mg/l».
German scientists Werner and Katharina von der Ohe found that heating honey for 24 hours at 40 °C and for 6 hours at 50 °C did not cause a noticeable increase in the content of hydroxymethylfurfural. Heating for 24 hours at a temperature of 50 °C and especially at 60 °C leads to a significant increase in the content of hydroxymethylfurfural.
Hence the same conclusion: Do we really drink a cup of tea all day or even an hour? But does the temperature of the tea in the cup remain constant? No, it decreases progressively, that is, the honey in the tea does not heat up for 24 hours.
Add honey to hot tea is not allowed, as it is harmful in a hot drink, so you need to throw the treat into warm water. It’s worth figuring out what is truth or myth, and how to drink the drink so that it benefits the body.
Tea with honey helps:
- Treatment and prevention of colds. Starting from October, it is necessary to prepare the body to face the cold, bacteria and infections.
- Increasing immunity. In autumn and spring period It is recommended to drink the drink with lemon.
- Activations gastrointestinal tract(relevant for girls in the process of losing weight).
- Accelerate metabolism. You can use it instead of sugar.
- Improving the functioning of the cardiovascular system.
- Relief from stress and emotional tension.
- Improved sleep.
- Improving the condition of skin, hair and nails.
- It is useful to dilute tea with nectar to slow down the aging process.
Adding honey and drinking it with hot tea is prohibited, because the dissolved product releases carcinogenic substances. To minimize harm, there is certain rules that should be followed:
- Temperature at which you can drink tea with honey: no higher than forty degrees.
- You need to choose the right variety, because some types do not dissolve well in liquid (sunflower, rapeseed).
- Add no more than two teaspoons of honey to the drink.
In what cases is harm possible?
Adding honey to water whose temperature is above sixty degrees is dangerous. This becomes a factor in education toxic substance– hydroxymethyl-furfural. This substance does not act immediately; it gradually accumulates in the liver and, with constant use, can cause poisoning. Oncological tumors (cancer) can also form in the stomach or intestines.
When added to hot drink Vitamins are lost in the beekeeping product; it is not useful and dangerous. The recovery process will be significantly delayed. It should be consumed with tea as a bite, and not dissolved in it.
How to drink correctly?
For colds, headaches, and sleep problems, honey is added to tea or warm water or milk. You can put a little honey on your palate and dissolve it with your tongue. Through blood vessels beneficial features the product will be absorbed faster into the blood and will have a beneficial effect.
You can stir honey with a warm drink. To get all the vitamins and microelements, you need to follow a few golden rules:
- Brew tea. To improve the smell and taste, you can mix several types of tea - herbal, black, green. Everything is selected according to taste.
- Let the tea brew, this will take five to seven minutes. During this time, the temperature will drop to eighty to eighty-five degrees.
- Pour the drink into a cup and let it cool a little more. To avoid getting a burn to the mucous membrane, you need to wait five to ten minutes.
- When you are ready to drink tea, throw in a couple of spoons of honey. Everything needs to be mixed thoroughly. This will allow the drink to cool down a bit.
- To enhance the therapeutic effect, you can throw a slice of lemon into the cup.
If you add honey not to tea, but eat it, put it on the tongue or palate and then drink it with liquid, then the effect of using it will be even greater. Nervousness will go away, the feeling of stress will go away. For insomnia and increased emotionality, experts recommend not diluting honey in a drink, water, coffee or milk, but putting it in your mouth and sucking it.
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Information that honey should not be heated appeared relatively recently and immediately attracted attention. The main argument in favor of prohibiting the heating of honey was that this product becomes carcinogenic when heated. However, there is only a grain of truth in this statement and, in order not to go to extremes, it is worth considering this issue in more detail.
What happens if you heat honey?
When heated, the following properties of honey manifest themselves:
- As the temperature of honey increases, its nutritional and medicinal properties decrease. The more honey is heated, the more it loses its bactericidal and immune-modulating properties. Therefore, adding honey to a hot drink does not make the drink more healing.
- Heating honey to a temperature of 45 ° C leads to the loss of valuable enzymes and. Glucose and fructose, which are beneficial to the body, also decompose at temperatures above the mentioned ones. From this follows the answer to the question to what temperature honey can be heated. It is best to try to consume honey at room temperature, and if you want to add it to tea, you should wait until the drink has cooled to a temperature of 45 ° C.
- Can be found great amount sources that say that heating honey above 60 °C makes the product carcinogenic. The main evidence why honey should not be heated is the fact that in hot honey this appears poisonous substance, as hydroxymethylfurfural. This substance is truly harmful to the body and is almost never removed from it. However, it is worth considering that this poison appears in honey in negligible quantities and therefore it is not capable of harming human health. For comparison, we can cite products such as carbonated sweet drinks and roasted coffee, which contain hydroxymethylfurfural in quantities tens of times higher than its content in hot honey.
“Even honey, if taken as medicine, is bitter” - that’s what people say. Can honey be considered a medicine, and tea with honey - healing? And when does honey turn from a healthy sweetness into poison?
We will tell you in this article what honey is, what its varieties are, whether you can drink hot tea with honey, and how to heat honey correctly.
What is honey made of: chemical composition
Honey is a viscous substance that has been familiar to everyone since childhood for its cloying sweetness. It is collected by bees, mainly in late spring, and people extract it from honeycombs. Everyone knows what honey looks like, most people have tried it at least once, but few people have thought about its composition. But he is very rich.
Honey mainly consists of carbohydrates. In addition to them, the sweets include: water, acids, including gluconic acid, amino acids and proteins, trace elements, bacteria, yeast and volatiles essential oils. The amount of all these substances in honey is insignificant.
Sometimes honey contains pesticides and antibiotics - this is the work of unscrupulous sellers. This is why honey on the market or in a store should be treated with caution. However, honey may also contain natural toxins. This is already the responsibility of the bees or even the flowers from which the bees collect nectar. In nature, there are flowers with poisonous nectar. There are not so many of them and bees prefer not to collect such nectar, but it happens that it still ends up in the honeycombs.
Types of honey and their benefits
Honey is a substance invaluable in its properties, but you need to know what varieties there are, how they differ and what ailments they are suitable for treating.
Meadow honey has a calming effect, helps relieve migraines, get rid of lack of sleep, and heal the respiratory organs. Meadow honey will benefit people who experience heart problems, vascular system, stomach and skin.
Kidneys, anemia, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal diseases should be treated with forest honey. Nectar collected by bees from the flowers of rowan, viburnum, willow, linden, black maple and hawthorn contains keratin, B vitamins, vitamin C, as well as E, K and PP.
May honey ripens three to four months after harvest. It is well absorbed by the body, as it is rich in fructose. Insulin is practically not needed to break down fructose, so drinking May honey is considered a preventive measure. diabetes mellitus and protection of the pancreas.
Buckwheat honey- This is a storehouse of iron and protein. They treat anemia. Constant consumption of buckwheat honey provides active work hematopoietic organs, improves blood composition, restores the liver and accelerates cell regeneration.
Recommended for seasonal colds, ARVI and even flu linden honey. It lowers temperature and activates sweating. Due to its anti-inflammatory properties, it is effective in treating inflammation of the kidneys, gallbladder and gastrointestinal tract.
Acacia honey strengthens nervous system, removes headache and helps with insomnia. This is the most popular and useful variety honey. It can be eaten by children, pregnant women and people suffering from diabetes. It has pronounced antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. Treats dermatitis, gastritis and ulcers.
Clover honey good for women with gynecological diseases, also helps treat the respiratory system. The main properties of clover honey are expectorant, antimicrobial and diaphoretic.
When honey stops helping and starts harming
Honey is sweetness. It contains a lot of carbohydrates, which means the calorie content of honey is high. Depending on the variety, it ranges from 300 to 450 kilocalories per hundred grams of product. Diabetics and people who are prone to obesity are not recommended to eat honey. No, of course, you can pamper yourself, but nothing more.
Allergy sufferers may experience nausea and vomiting after consuming honey; in addition, hives are likely, heat and even asthma attacks. In this regard, it is better not to give honey to children under two years of age. And after two years, you shouldn’t overdo it, because too much honey eaten can lead to caries. To avoid unpleasant consequences for teeth, it is better to rinse your mouth after eating honey.
There is an opinion that purchased honey is also harmful. However, this is not entirely true: it is simply not useful. At factories, preservatives are added to honey, and then it is distilled through filters. This is done for cleaning, uniform color, and to make it more convenient to pour into jars. At the same time, the taste properties of honey are preserved. Therefore, for those who are not looking for benefits, but simply like to enjoy honey, there will be no difference between honey from an apiary and from a store.
Also, the beneficial properties of honey begin to evaporate even after a year of storage. And this despite the fact that the honey itself may not spoil for many years. The most better time for the use of honey in medicinal or for preventive purposes- immediately after collection and within 12 months.
Honey in hot tea: benefits and harms
Honey is wonderful useful product, which can turn into poison in a few seconds. This transformation does not depend on the sellers (if they did not heat the honey), the addition of preservatives and bees, it’s all about heating.
Is it possible to add honey to hot tea instead of sugar? Honey should not be heated or added to hot tea, hot coffee, water or milk: it becomes hazardous to health.
Already when heated to 40 degrees, honey begins to lose its healing properties and turns into a sweet fructose syrup; after 45 degrees, the product changes composition, all enzymes collapse, and honey becomes more harmful than beneficial.
With further heating to 60 degrees and above, a substance is formed in honey - oxymethylfurfural. If this terrible substance is constantly consumed in food, then the risk of malignant tumors in the digestive tract increases tenfold.
In addition, when honey is heated, saccharides turn into carcinogenic substances. Their frequent use negatively affects the functioning of the kidneys, blood vessels, liver, stomach and intestines. General poisoning of the body occurs.
Conclusion: Hot honey is harmful to health, so hot tea and honey are incompatible.
That's why hot honey can only be used in for cosmetic purposes, especially since its consistency will contribute to this.
But it is better to use honey with tea or coffee, as they say, as a bite - it’s both tasty and healthy.
How to heat honey correctly
If you need heated honey, you will have to adhere to some rules.
Rule ONE. Never use a microwave to heat honey. With this heating method, honey loses all its beneficial properties within a minute.
Rule TWO. Use water bath. In this case, the beneficial properties of the product are preserved. After the water in the bath boils, the gas must be reduced to a minimum. The most important thing in this heating method is to control the temperature of the water; if this is not done, the effect will be like in a microwave.
How to control the temperature of honey: the water is brought to a boil, then the gas is reduced, and the water slowly continues to boil. Place a container of honey on top of a saucepan of water, but the honey in the container will not immediately heat up to 100 degrees. The temperature will rise gradually, and you will have to monitor it with a thermometer in your hands (you stand and control that the temperature of the honey does not exceed 40 degrees).
Is it possible to put this honey in hot tea or hot milk? Yes, if the temperature control technology is not compromised. Honey is harmful to health only if it is heated above 60 degrees, but if the temperature of honey does not exceed 40, it will retain all its beneficial properties.
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