Healthy Honey

You always thought honey was healthy right?

Well it is. (Phew!)

Honey has always been something humans have eaten – a food, a sweetener, a medicine and even as a currency, it was so highly valued.  Apart from having an almost infinite shelf life (if stored in airtight containers), it is naturally healthy containing antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes that contribute to our immune system and our general physical and mental health.

So we should all eat loads!

The people at the New Zealand Honey Co choose specific nectar to give you extra and specific health benefits.

For example, this Beechforest Honeydew Honey is great for general health and well being.

New Zealand Honey Co explains:

This honey comes from the sap produced by a small scale insect that feeds off the beech trees. The sap trickles down the outside of the tree and is collected by bees during early winter and spring, when there is no or little other floral sources for the bees to forage, resulting in a very pure honey with very special properties and flavour. It comes from the untouched, ancient beech forests that stretch along the base of the Southern Alps, in the South Island of New Zealand. There is no other activity here other than beekeeping, resulting in a honey as pure and natural as you will ever find.

This is a clear runny honey, and the New Zealand Honey Co sent me one of their new squeezy bottles to try.

I was struck by the gorgeous chestnut red colour of this honey.  It is completely smooth and comes out of the bottle easily.  Actually it’s very runny.  It smells a little of citrus, and when spread on toast is clear and fine.

The taste is really good, not too sweet, but I’m not sure it’s that much different to the honey I normally buy.  I love honey on toast and this worked well on my usual wholemeal sliced loaf.  I squeezed a bit into my porridge and that was good too.

The 10+ refers to the pre-biotic nature of the honey (the amount of oligosaccharide sugar in it) – all New Zealand Honey Co honeys are given a rating.  I can’t really comment whether this has affected my health and well being of course, but I can say it tastes good and if you fancy a slightly different kind of honey then give this a go – at least with this you know exactly which bees your toast-topper came from.

Take a look at the New Zealand Honey Co website for more squeezy honey goodness.