It's very sugary, honey is. I thought you'd have considered it to be one step above radioactive waste.

In moderation, honey is fine, as is a spoon of sugar on your strawberries occasionally.
The problems occur when people are ingesting kilos of the stuff per month.
If we look at the vending machines in workplaces, what is in them?
Mainly sugary confectionery and sugary drinks.
At my previous place of work, my desk was near the machine and I was amazed at the number of people visiting the machine twice or three times a day.

I agree that it's fine in moderation, and have said so throughout this thread. I rather thought Minty viewed the stuff as the sweet-tasting work of the devil though.

Rock God X wrote:It's very sugary, honey is. I thought you'd have considered it to be one step above radioactive waste. Lovely in moderation. The GI levels for various food make interesting reading. According to Havard Medical School: Whole wheat bread (average) 71 Lucozade 95+10 Orange juice 50 All Bran 55 Cornflakes 93 Special K 69 Museli (average) 66 Oatmeal 55 Banana 62 Pear 38 Raisins 64 Grapefruit 25 Carrots 35 Potato (boiled) 82 Honey 61 Full-fat milk 41 I had to go elsewhere to find data on what we'd call 'sugar': "Sucrose (granulated table sugar) most 58-65, 2 studies much higher, bringing the average to 68 (sucrose is half glucose and half fructose)"

Rock God X wrote:It's very sugary, honey is. I thought you'd have considered it to be one step above radioactive waste. Lovely in moderation. The GI levels for various food make interesting reading. According to Havard Medical School: Whole wheat bread (average) 71 Lucozade 95+10 Orange juice 50 All Bran 55 Cornflakes 93 Special K 69 Museli (average) 66 Oatmeal 55 Banana 62 Pear 38 Raisins 64 Grapefruit 25 Carrots 35 Potato (boiled) 82 Honey 61 Full-fat milk 41 I had to go elsewhere to find data on what we'd call 'sugar': "Sucrose (granulated table sugar) most 58-65, 2 studies much higher, bringing the average to 68 (sucrose is half glucose and half fructose)"

I think their 'whole grain bread' is what we would call 'granary'. Wholemeal bread is usually in the low fifties. I found it odd that banana cake made with sugar has a lower GI than banana cake made without sugar.

I suppose it depends on what other ingredients would be used instead of sugar.

But I deliberately used what should be a decent source.

I'm not doubting its accuracy, just pointing out that the result is a little counter-intuitive.

I think quite a lot is, in terms of diet – or at least in terms of the mainstream diet advice for the last 30-40 years. The whole issue of saturated fat, specifically from natural sources, has meant that, when people are saying that butter is way healthier for you than one of the low-fat spreads, it sounds 'wrong'.

Similarly, what we were saying about fruit: some fruits have a high GI, some have a low figure. All fruits are not equal, in effect, in those terms.

And what you were saying about honey is interesting, in that the average for honey is little different than that for ordinary sugar.

Now clearly there are plenty of ways in which honey is vastly better than sugar. But the whole GI thing does seem to make sense.

I'm not remotely suggesting that everyone should stop eating any sugar – I'm certainly not going to stop making marmalade or the occasional cake, for instance – but so much goes back to the dual issue of people not realising how much sugar there is in processed foods, including often in foods that are marketed as healthy (particularly 'low fat' – see above) and even in fresh foods – fruits.

It strikes me that there's a similarity here with something I read once from a doctor who had been asked by a woman about salt. She was apparently worried that her husband salted his food at the table. The doctor said that that wasn't the problem – it was all the salt in processed foods that you didn't realise was there.