Honey Wars

[PaleoPhil]

OK, here's your chance to rave about your favorite honey. I'd like to make sure I've tried some of the very best honey before giving up on it or consigning myself to severely limiting it for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, honey discussions sometimes get emotional. I hope it doesn't get that way and I tried to diffuse some of that tension with an attempt at humor--the tongue-in-cheek thread title. Here are some questions that I would be interested in people's answers on:

Q: How much of your favorite honey can you eat in a day without significant negative symptoms? Have you tried eating a pound or more in a single day and what were the results?
Q: Is your honey heated, centrifuged (likely mildly heated to a level that Aajonus claims is damaging), hand-packed, left in the original honeycomb container (usually a round container that the bees make their honeycomb in)?
Q: Have you tried raw fermented honey and what did you think about it?
Q: Have you tried honey that includes cappings, bee pollen, royal jelly, or other natural stuff that often gets filtered out?
Q: Does it work better for you to eat other foods with honey or to eat it alone? Does honey help you digest meats (like Aajonus claims) or other foods better?

[kurite]

Ive only tried two honeys, one was just honey with a peanut butter consistency. It was claimed raw but who really knows. It tasted amazing but I was never able to eat a lot of honey at once just out of the sheer sweetness of it. The plain honey was amazing tasting to me. The other was raw honey with royal jelly and pollen. It had the same consistency but it did not taste nearly as good as the plain honey.

This is a site to the plain one I had
http://www.vitacost.com/YS-Organic-Bee-Farms-Raw-Honey/?csrc=GPF-PA-726635121124&ci_sku=726635121124&ci_gpa=pe&ci_kw=raw%20honey&ctype=2

[djr_81]

My favorite honey is an Israeli honey I buy at an ethnic store. It's a 6x6 piece of comb in a small plastic container. I couldn't tell you the name though as the package is practically devoid of English. It's slightly stronger in flavor than a Clover honey and makes me feel good in small doses (1 teaspoon max with a full meal of ~1/3 pound suet and 1 pound ground GF beef, a dash of sea salt with the meat & fat). If I eat more than that, or eat it by itself I get a bit of acid build-up and malaise. If I eat just the little bit with a full meal I seem to have more energy afterwards.
I still have concerns about how the honey does or does not feed Candida. I am on a sabbatical from it right now but will probably buy more in a couple weeks.

[actionhero]

From my experiments with raw honey I would say it's the most unpredictable substance of all the raw paleo foods. Sometimes I can eat 200-300gr without any problems and feel very good and then another time I'd eat only 50gr and feel an immediate depowerment in my being. I think it depends on internal chemistry and how various things interact with each other. I did notice less negative effects when having it with raw butter or fruit instead of just straight out of the jar.

I prefer just raw honey but have tried both commercial honeycomb and dirty farmers market honeycomb (which smelled disgusting and tasted extremely nasty).

[PaleoPhil]

Good points about the the tastiest honeys not necessarily being the healthiest (for example, I find Manuka to be nasty tasting but lots of people claim it's one of the healthiest) and effects of honey eaten alone vs. with other foods. I added questions on those to my initial post, plus a question about whether honey helps you digest other foods (such as with AV's claim that honey helps digest meats).

[Löwenherz]

I like the taste of honey, but my teeth don't like the aggressive sugars. I don't eat honey anymore. I even can't see any digestive benefits from honey.

Löwenherz

[ForTheHunt]

Yeah same here. Sometimes I feel vitalized by honey, other times it feels like I've just eaten a brick. I think it must have something to do with it's processing - the honey I eat is 'coldprocessed' and supposedly has all it's enzymes intact. But it's very commercial so I don't know..

[Susan]

It is very difficult for me to find a clear instinctive stop when eating honey pure.  Eating honeycombs the stop  becomes clear and I have no problems anymore.

My favorite taste is eucalyptus, it's not so sweet as other one's.

I don't mix the honeycombs with other food.

I think, the combination of meat and honey is not very suitable: a lot of proteins and a lot of carbohydrates = a lot of AGEs.

[PaleoPhil]

I may have given an unintended impression with the title--I meant the war between the advocates of different honeys, not the war between the advocates of honey vs. those who don't do well on it. I'm basically looking to find out what the best of the best honeys are and how folks do on them. This was inspired by Brady's thread in which he seemed to do remarkably well on a honey that is likely centrifuged. I may try that one out of curiosity, but I'm wondering if other folks have had excellent success with honeys and which ones.

[King Salmon]

yeah,it seems Brady gained weight/mass/muscle on honey.The way it looks though is that if one wants to gain as such,they need to consume some type of carb.The question is,which type of carb is best suited for a particular individual?Potatoes?honey?Fruits?Squash? I guess it's a matter of tolerance and adaptability.
I've heard that consuming fats also works to achieve this purpose.But have yet to see strong results.For example,on a ZC diet,I'm assuming one would have to consume major amounts of fats in order to gain.In which case,palatibility might be a problem.

[CHK91]

Does anyone have any experience with plain bee pollen? Did it improve anything?

[TylerDurden]

Does anyone have any experience with plain bee pollen? Did it improve anything?

no it was useless - it does give me lots of instant energy but i always feel extremely hot afterwards which is a very bad sign.

[djr_81]

My favorite honey is an Israeli honey I buy at an ethnic store. It's a 6x6 piece of comb in a small plastic container. I couldn't tell you the name though as the package is practically devoid of English. It's slightly stronger in flavor than a Clover honey and makes me feel good in small doses (1 teaspoon max with a full meal of ~1/3 pound suet and 1 pound ground GF beef, a dash of sea salt with the meat & fat). If I eat more than that, or eat it by itself I get a bit of acid build-up and malaise. If I eat just the little bit with a full meal I seem to have more energy afterwards.
I still have concerns about how the honey does or does not feed Candida. I am on a sabbatical from it right now but will probably buy more in a couple weeks.

I was at a job site ~15 minutes from the store today so I made the drive to stock up on a couple things including the honey. It wasn't as enjoyable with this evening's meal as it had been last time so maybe I instinctively needed something in it. I'll probably leave it be for a while now.

FWIW the honeycomb is Turkish, not Israeli. It's a brand called Anadolu.

[CHK91]

  i always feel extremely hot afterwards which is a very bad sign.

Can you describe this feeling a bit more? Why is it a bad sign? Allergy?

Does anyone else have any input on bee pollen?

[Iguana]

Does anyone else have any input on bee pollen?

Yes, I like it sometimes (better than honey), it's very nourishing. There are different ones, some are sweet, some are a bit bitter depending on what the bees fed. When I have some good one (seldom 'cause it's expensive and/or difficult to find) I can eat a 500 gr jar in a few days.

[TylerDurden]

Can you describe this feeling a bit more? Why is it a bad sign? Allergy?

Does anyone else have any input on bee pollen?

  The extra heat is so intense that it does seem like a food-intolerance of some kind.

[Hannibal]

I like the taste of honey, but my teeth don't like the aggressive sugars.

I feel the same.
I think that those primitive tribes in Africa who ate huge amounts of raw honey had very healthy teeth, not "battered" by civilization.