DO YOU LIKE HONEY?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18203, 2 March 1929, Page 15

DO YOU LIKE HONEY?

Honey is popular because of its delicious flavour and aroma, and tempting appearance; but it has a still more valuable virtue in that it is a very easily assimilated form of sugar, of which it contains about 70 per cent. This is a mixture of half-and-half grape-sugar and fruit-sugar, and is known as “invert” sugar. As invert sugar crystallises with difficulty, good honey is translucent and has perfectly clear edges, with no trace of crystallisation. Honey bought in the comb is more aromatic than that which has been extracted for some time. Granulated extracted honey should have a fine, even grain and be creamy white in colour. Fruit is another source of invert sugar, of which dried fruits, figs, dates, raisins, and currents contain from 60 to 70 per cent. Fresh fruit contains from 15 per cent, downwards, though nectarines, pineapples, oranges, apples and some plums contain canesugar, or sucrose, as well. Generally speaking, sugar as it occurs naturally in fruit is in the best condition for easy assimilation. Cooking with acids will change sucrose to invert sugar, so that white or brown sugar added to stewed fruit before cooking is made more digestible. Molasses, treacle, and golden syrup contain both sucrose and invert sugar. Brown sugars contain a little invert sugar and also a trace of water, so that they are less sweet than white sugar, which is 100 percent, food, one knob of which will provide twenty calories of heat-energy. Sugar provides the body with heat and energy, the wherewithal to do work: and it also fattens ; but it does not build or repair the body. It is very quickly absorbed and utilised, especially when hard physical work is being done, hence the restorative effects of sweet drinks, chocolate, and toffee in relieving muscle fatigue.