Honey and sugar are both common sweeteners in our daily lives. Although honey is more expensive than sugar, its nutritional and health benefits are also stronger. Eating honey has many advantages over eating sugar:
1. People who often eat sugar can damage their teeth, while people who eat honey not only do not harm their teeth but also have a sterilizing and disinfecting effect on the mouth. Honey contains an enzyme that can produce hydrogen peroxide—a main component that inhibits the activity of bacteria that damage teeth and cause cavities.
2. Honey is easier to digest and absorb than sucrose. The main components of honey are glucose and fructose, monosaccharides that are easily absorbed directly by the human body. Honey also contains a large amount of enzymes from the bee's digestive tract, such as amylase and invertase, which help the human body digest and absorb the nutrients in honey. Therefore, for the elderly, infants, and people who have just recovered from an illness, eating honey can provide rich nutrition. In addition, honey has a high calorie content, so it has the effect of quickly alleviating and eliminating fatigue for people with high-intensity physical labor or strenuous exercise.
3. Fructose does not convert excess sugar into fat to accumulate in the body, leading to obesity. This is a valuable characteristic of honey and is good news for women who love sweets but are afraid of gaining weight.
4. Honey contains protein, which can not only increase human nutrition but also becomes an important source of food for infants when they cannot digest and absorb the casein in milk. Therefore, for artificially fed infants, replacing sucrose with honey is extremely beneficial for both digestion and nutrition.
5. Although the amount of minerals in honey is not large, they are indispensable to the human body, especially for infants. Because the iron content in human milk and cow's milk is very low, it can be supplemented by taking honey.