Honey is known, produced, and widely used all over the world. This sweetening agent, produced by bees and stored in wax structures-honeycombs, has been part of the human diet for millennia. Yet, all of a sudden, honey is not just honey anymore. Its increased popularity has made this thick golden liquid a favorite ingredient not only in the food but also in the beauty and health industry. The best-known products harvested from bees are honey and beeswax. However, there are so many more than just these two. Honey-based products vary from bee by-products (such as beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, etc.) to food products, cosmetics, and medicine. This superfood is used as a natural sweetener, or it is infused in tea, cookies, sauces, etc. In cosmetics, honey is often used in personal care products such as face and hand creams, body lotions, hair care products, and sun creams. In medicine, it is mostly used in the production of salves for the treatment of burn wounds.
Nevertheless, the increased awareness of the importance of bees and pollination has also influenced honey’s high demand on the market. Furthermore, today, more than ever, consumers are making sustainable and eco-friendly products a priority – and honey is precisely that. In this article, we share with you how honey and its production helps the environment and supports a healthy lifestyle.
Honey Helps You Stay Healthy And Beautiful
Honey’s popularity goes beyond just being super delicious food. In the traditional, alternative, and modern medicine, honey has been praised for its various health benefits. The reason behind it – raw honey contains a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and disease-fighting antioxidants. Precisely due to these properties, honey is used for chronic wound management and combating infection, but also for preventing acid reflux, or relieving cold and cough symptoms. Since honey is a rich source of antioxidant compounds, it may also help in preventing blood clot formation, which can consequently lead to heart attacks and strokes. Raw honey is neither heated or filtered. It is removed from the hive and directly bottled. As such, it contains trace amounts of yeast, wax, and pollen, which add to its “powers.” In terms of honey’s health benefits, this is extremely important, since heating it to 40°C (104 F), destroys invertase – an essential enzyme, thus losing much of its nutritional punch.
Thanks to honey’s extraordinary, youth-boosting qualities, this superfood is often used in the formulation of a variety of beauty and personal care products. It is the industry’s secret ingredient in the production of facial and hand care creams, since it softens, moisturizes, and defends the skin. As an addition, its antioxidant properties make it ideal for the production of eye and facial make up cosmetics, and you can also find it in removing makeup lotions because it can unclog the pores and give the face moisture. Honey’s emollient and humectant attributes are likewise utilized in hair care products. It helps smooth the hair follicles, provides shine to lifeless hair and adds moisture to dry strands.
The Environmental Benefits of Honey
Honeybees are pollinators, thus playing an essential part in every aspect of the ecosystem. They support the growth of the plants, which serve as food and shelter for every creature. Bees contribute to complex, interconnected ecosystems that allow a diverse number of different species to co-exist. As bees produce honey by collecting nectar from honeydew and pollen in their immediate surrounding, its natural conditions and environmental influences are directly reflected in the composition and quality of the honey. For this reason, equally crucial to honey’s health and beauty benefits, are the environmental benefits that raw honey provides.
Sustainable farming supported
Honey’s primary opponent in the sweetener industry is, without a doubt, sugar. However, the process of farming and producing raw honey is far less labor extensive than the production of sugars. Growing sugar requires a great deal of fertilizer and pesticides to get sugar cane or sugar beets to multiply. Sugar also requires a large amount of land and water for its cultivation. Honey, on the other hand, needs very little space and is beneficial for the surrounding ecosystems.
Honey bees can also reduce the need for artificial fertilizers, which can be poisonous and can harm the environment through the process of pollination. When using honey bees in the production of both raw honey sweeteners and to fertilize surrounding plant life, the benefits for the environment are doubled.
Processing time shortened
In addition to using a great deal of water and taking up a fair amount of land, sugar also requires extensive processing to bring the sugars out of the plant. Once sugar cane or sugar beet is cut and juiced, it then follows a series of refining steps like evaporation, boiling, and bleaching to get the final product of white sugar. Raw honey, in comparison, requires absolutely no processing because the honey bees take care of it for us. Once the hive is full of honey, the only process that is done is the extraction of the sweetener.
Additional protection of honey bees
Honey bees have been in decline in recent years. In the US alone, from April 1, 2018, to April 1, 2019, the bee population decreased by 40.7%. If honey bees go extinct, it could have detrimental effects on the cultivation of plant life used to sustain human life. Thus, by replacing sweeteners like sugar with honey, the demand for this natural substance will grow, thus stimulating the growth of the protection efforts for the honey bees invested.
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