The Sad Truth About Honey.

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For decades, honey was the darling of the health foods industry, and as it should have been. Honey has several health benefits plus it's a better option than sugar.

• Honey contains antioxidants and bioflavinoids, which help reduce cancer risk and heart disease.

• Honey is antibacterial and an antifungal due to a particular enzyme that the bees add into the honey.

• Honey helps soothe irritated throats and surpress coughs.

• Honey can reduce certain gastrointestinal disorders.

Aside from just regular honey, raw honay can do even more because of all the enzymes that are left in the honey since it is not heated.

• Raw honey is antiviral as well as antifungal and antibacterial

• Raw honey is an even more powerful antioxidant than just regular honey and can really help strengthen the immune system.

• Raw honey helps promote restorative sleep.

After reading all of the amazing health benefits honey has to offer, your probably wondering why is the title of this "The Sad Truth About Honey?" Well, because the state of our honey is declining fast.

Thanks to not only genetically engineered food, but also to the overuse of pesticides and herbacides, it is drastically affecting not only bees, its also affecting their honey. Im sure many of you are aware of the news that the populations of the honey bee are in rapid decline, but what many of you may not realize is that our beloved honey is starting to become tainted with the garbage that is in GMO crops.

The bottom line, is that you can't control where the bee goes to pollinate. Since, pesticidies and herbacides are used so heavily and so widely across the country, those pesticides are starting to become unavoidable to a lot of insects, including the honeybee. In 2014, their was a study done on eleven different honey samples, and they found that five of those eleven samples, contained a common pesticides known as glyophosphate or better known as Monsanto's "Roundup". Five out of eleven is roughly fifty percent! I'm looking at this big picture and breaking it down logically. If you can't control where the bee goes to pollinate, if there are GMO crops and insecticides everywhere, the odds seem to be pretty high that the honeybee is going to come in contact with one of these poisons, that is then going to go into honey. It's starting to change how I look at honey.

They have recently come out with some studies that are starting to show glyophosphate is a carcinogen. So, despite all of the health benefits honey and raw honey have, when you add in the dangers of pesticides and GMO's, it sort of becomes a systems of checks and balances, where you have to ask yourself, "Are the health benefits of honey, worth the potential risks?"

If you decide it's not, there are possible solutions. It will cost more money, but you can buy honey from a country that has banned or limited GMO's and pesticides. New Zeeland is a perfect example of this. Most countries have undefined rules about GMO's, where they appear to limit some, but not all of their uses. New Zeeland is an exception and does not allow GMO's to be grown in their country at all! New Zeeland is also famous for producing raw Manuka honey. Raw Manuka honey has all the health benefits of regular honey and more! The only trick is that you have to make sure that the honey actually comes from New Zeeland, because just like anything, their are many imitaters.

The downside? Raw Manuka honey can be fairly expensive, which means you have to watch how you use it. You will probably want to save it for fighting a cold or maybe as an occasional treat in a cup of tea.

In my opinion: Local honey (or honey that comes from anywhere in the US) is no longer safe for human consumption. If by some miracle, we were to do away with GMO's and pesticide use, than it would be a different story, but sadly that isn't the case. If you can afford Manuka honey, then I say "Great, go for it!", but if your not full of money, like me, than I will probably be avoiding honey until I see some change in how food is grown in our country.