You must have stumbled on a container of honey in your store or closets, you need this honey, but you are afraid it must have expired. Has it really expired? Does honey expire? How does it look if it expired? You will find out soon.
Honey is very sweet to taste and can be used for diverse purposes for an effective result. In fact, one can not get enough of the sweetness of honey in meals.
Honey is a viscous food substance that is made by honey bees and some related insects. Bees produce honey from plants’ sugary secretions (floral nectar) or secretions of other insects (such as honeydew) by regurgitation, enzymatic activity, and water evaporation.
Extraction of Honey
The honey is then fetched from wild bee colonies or domesticated beehives. A honey hive produces about 29 kilograms (65 lb) of honey per year on average.
There are three types of bees in a wild nest. These are; a single female queen bee, a seasonally variable number of male drone bees to fertilize new queens, and 20,000 to 40,000 female worker bees.
Bee smokers are used in pacifying the bee to be able to fetch the honey from its hive. At the sight of the smoke, the bees become less aggressive, thereby dimming the pheromones with which they communicate.
Furthermore, the honeycomb is carefully removed from the hive, and the honey is fetched from the comb with the use of a honey extractor or by simply crushing it. The final process is the honey’s filtration to remove beeswax and other debris to give the honey its perfect look, taste, and sleekness.
Chemical Content of Honey
Honey contains almost all the six classes of food.
Carbohydrate
It comprises about 82% of the honey content. They include;
Monosaccharides _ fructose (38.2%) and glucose (31%).
Disaccharides(9%) _ sucrose, maltose, maltulose, kojibiose, turanose, and isomaltose.
Oligosaccharides (4.2%) _ panose, theanderose, and erlose.
Amino Acids and Proteins
Enzymes
Invertase ( converts sucrose to glucose and fructose)
Amylase (breaks starch into simpler units)
Glucose oxidase (converts glucose to gluconolactone, which yields gluconic acid)
Hydrogen peroxide ( breaks down glucose oxidase-formed peroxide to water and oxygen)
Acid phosphorylase (eliminates phosphate from organic phosphate)
Amino acids
There are 18 free amino acids in honey, which Proline happens to be the most abundant.
Vitamins, Antioxidants, and Minerals
Together with the B vitamins riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, folic acid, and vitamin B6 content in honey, there are also traces of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and the minerals calcium, iron, zinc, potassium, phosphorous, magnesium, selenium, chromium, and manganese.
Flavonoids are the main antioxidants in honey, and one unique flavonoid-content in honey is pinocembrin.
Other antioxidants are ascorbic acid, catalase, and selenium. In fact, the darker the honey, the greater its antioxidizing properties.
Organic acids
Acetic, butanoic, formic, citric, succinic, lactic, malic, pyroglutamic, and gluconic acids.
Aromatic acids
Gluconic acid, hydroxymethylfurfural.
Uses of Honey
Honey is versatile in nature. It can be used for different purposes. The use of hiney include;
- It can be used to monitor blood sugar.
- Used to tackle cancer.
- Used to fasting the healing of injuries and wounds.
- Used to boost hair growth.
- It can be used in the cure of Psoriasis.
- It can be used to boost fertility in men and women.
- A mixture of honey, beeswax, and olive oil helps reduce the pain, itching, and bleeding associated with hemorrhoids.
- It can be used to prevent cancer.
- It is the best sugar improvise for diabetic patients.
Shelf Life of Honey
Does honey expire? The answer is NO! as long as it is properly preserved. Honey can stay as long as possible when stored appropriately because of its biological makeup.
Nevertheless, due to the bees’ honey-making process and the honey’s low pH and sugar content, it is difficult for an organism to spoil food to survive in honey.
There are many adulterated kinds of honey in shops these days, so ensure that honey is still in its natural state and is sealed properly if you must enjoy its long-lasting shelf life.
Check out the Classes of Food and their Function to the Body with Examples 2020
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