The Benefits of Honey for Weight Loss
People who have a sweet tooth may have a hard time letting go of sweets when they want to lose weight. Having too much simple sugar might have been one of the reasons why some people are overweight to start with. Many varieties of artificial sweeteners have been developed hoping to reduce the total caloric intake while keeping the sweetness satisfaction.
For me, honey has surprisingly been very helpful for my pollen allergy and losing weight. This year, I experienced some intense allergy symptoms during the spring. As I was searching for allergy-symptom reduction remedies, unprocessed local honey surfaced as one of the effective foods for diminishing the severity of the symptoms. Although honey may be helpful for my pollen allergy, I had a concern about whether the addition of honey into my daily food intake would add extra calories and make me gain weight.
I decided to try it; I bought a jar of locally produced unprocessed raw honey and added one teaspoon of honey into my tea every day. Within days of drinking honey, I noticed that the reddish, itchy skin around my eyelids started to look better and smoother. Then I stepped onto the scale to check my weight, and I saw that instead of gaining weight, it actually dropped half a pound. I thought, could this be related to honey? I couldn’t help wondering about it since I have only seen very few minuscule changes in my weight over many months.
I searched PubMed about honey and body weight thinking that if there were any weight benefits of honey, it would have been studied and reported by now since honey is a common food, and obesity and ways to lose weight have been prevalent topics. Sure enough, I found a review paper (1) discussing the valuable effects of honey against obesity. Table 1 of this paper listed both animal and human studies related to weight changes comparing eating honey with sugar (link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6115915/ ).
This review paper listed studies to support the following health benefits of honey: honey is anti-obesity, antidiabetic, hypolipidemic, and hypotensive. Honey was also reported to limit weight gain and fat accumulation, improve insulin sensitivity, lower blood glucose levels, enhance lipid metabolism, and reduce oxidative stress (1). With all the benefits described, I thought that I myself should start developing a sweet tooth for honey.
Among the studies listed, it was reported that honey helped with weight loss with the following findings:
1. Feeding rats honey for 33 days resulted in a lower percentage of weight gain (14.7% less weight gain) than those fed with sucrose and mixed sugars diet (2).
2. Feeding rats honey for 365 days significantly prevented overall weight gain compared to the rats receiving long-term sucrose. Rats receiving long-term honey treatment developed significantly lower body fat percentage compared to the sucrose group, measuring at 25.5 % and 34.7% of body fat percentage, respectively (3).
3. When feeding 7-day-old rats (baby rats) with either cane syrup or honey with identical nutritional value, visceral fat of rats receiving cane syrup was substantially higher compared to rats fed with honey (4). This result in growing rats was very similar to what had been observed in adult rats (3).
4. In a human study (5), 55 overweight human subjects (body mass index (BMI) of >25 kg/m2)) were assigned to receive either sucrose or natural unprocessed honey randomly. 17 subjects in the control group received 70 g of sucrose dissolved in 250 ml tap water daily, while 38 subjects in the experimental group received 70 g of honey dissolved in 250 ml tap water each day for 30 days. It is important to note that people in both groups did not undergo a special diet regimen, drug therapy, or change in their lifestyle, such as physical exercise, during the period of study. At the end of the 30-day study, people in the sucrose group gained body weight (+0.6%), which is expected since 70 g sugar can add extra calories. People who were given honey lost body weight (-1.3%). People in the sucrose group had a fat mass gain of 2.8% and body fat percentage gain of 0.9%. On the other hand, people in the honey group had a fat mass weight reduction (-1.1%) and body fat percentage reduction (-1.8%), along with significantly decreased BMI (-1.2%); subjects in the sucrose-fed group gained in BMI (+0.4%) (5).
I found these results very interesting because that 1) the human subjects did not make any other lifestyle changes, 2) 70 g of sucrose or honey is a good amount of additional calories which in theory the subjects would gain weight, and 3) a 30-day study actually is a very short time for body weight change to be observed, and most weight-management studies run 3 or 6 months in order to see a difference in body weight change with any interventions. Sucrose versus honey could result in body weight changes in this short time period, and the experiment was held in a situation very similar to real life. The benefits of honey may be explained by the effects of many nutritional factors unprocessed honey contains.
To test honey for my own use, I weighed the one teaspoon of honey that I typically poured out and found it to be roughly 18 g by weight. I will stick to my 1 teaspoon a day and see what kind of weight change I may experience after 30 days. Do you want to join me in losing weight through the use of honey? Let me know in the Contact Us section if you have tried honey and found it impacting your weight.
References:
1. Ramli, N.Z.; Chin, K.Y.; Zarkasi, K.A.; Ahmad, F. A Review on the Protective Effects of Honey against Metabolic Syndrome. Nutrients. 2018 Aug 2;10(8). pii: E1009.
Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6115915/
2. Chepulis, L.M. The effect of honey compared to sucrose, mixed sugars, and a sugar-free diet on weight gain in young rats. J. Food Sci. 2007, 72, S224–S229.
3. Chepulis, L.; Starkey, N. The long-term effects of feeding honey compared with sucrose and a sugar-free diet on weight gain, lipid profiles, and DEXA measurements in rats. J. Food Sci. 2008, 73, H1–H7.
4. Ajibola, A.; Chamunorwa, J.P.; Erlwanger, K.H. Comparative effect of cane syrup and natural honey on abdominal viscera of growing male and female rats. Indian J. Exp. Biol. 2013, 51, 303–312.
5. Yaghoobi, N.; Al-Waili, N.; Ghayour-Mobarhan, M.; Parizadeh, S.M.R.; Abasalti, Z.; Yaghoobi, Z.; Yaghoobi, F.; Esmaeili, H.; Kazemi-Bajestani, S.M.R.; Aghasizadeh, R.; et al. Natural honey and cardiovascular risk factors; effects on blood glucose, cholesterol, triacylglycerole, CRP, and body weight compared with sucrose. Sci. World J. 2008, 8, 463–469.