Honey

[proudsahm23]

I have just become aware of how good honey is for you and was wondering if anyone could recommend the best kind of honey?

 

Salaam

[-Cassandra-]

The best honey you could get is one that is grown in the same area you live in.  This is because the bees will have collected pollen from the plants in your local area.  Consuming this type of honey can actually help to give immunity to allergies from local plants.  In additino to buying local it is better to go with raw or unpasturized honey.  It will be thicker and may even look "creamy" or witish in color.  Pasturized or filtered honey is what you will see in most grocery stores.  It has been heated (usually to about 160 F) and then is strained through cheesecloth (or something similar) to remove the elements that make it harden.  Honey is not generally found in liquid form naturally.  Raw honey contains amylase, an enzyme concentrated in flower pollen which helps predigest starchy foods like breads.  If you have local bee farms youcanusually buy direct from them otherwise check out local farmer's markets and whole food/natural food/organic food stores.  If your only choice is buying it from a farmers market buy a large jar (it often is sold in 2.5 lbs jars sometimes larger) and will probably last you several months if your replacing refined sugar with honey or longer if your just using it for occasional replacement or snacks.  We buy about one large jar a year for about $21 but we do not replace all sugars with it.  We mostly eat it as a snack on toast or sometimes we serve our pancakes with hiney intead of syrup.  Of course it gets used in baklavas and the like too.  Occasionally we use it to sweeten tea instead of sugar but not as much as we probably should.  Of course we also use hiney anytime we have a sore throat in the house.  Sometimes it is marked as "raw" sometimes "unpasturized" or I've even seen "creamed" the creamed apparently has to do with the color and texture which is of course stiffer not because there's cream mixed in or some other process.