How Many Calories in Honey?

Most people with a sweet tooth will have experienced the delicious taste of honey, a natural product that is created by the work of bees, but how many calories are in honey? This page is a guide to answering the fundamental questions 'what is honey?' and 'is honey good for you?', before going on to inform you as to the number of honey calories you are going to find in a variety of different quantities of this tasty food.

If you are interested in calories in honey then you may also find the following pages interesting:

• How many calories in sugar?
• How many calories in peanut butter?
• How many calories in pancakes?

Before we go on to cover the calories honey has to offer, we are going to provide some other important information on it.

What is honey?

Let's start off by talking about what honey is, just in case you were wondering. Honey is the product of nectar that is extracted from a variety of flowering plants by honey bees. Honey is incredibly sweet, more so than sugar, the sweetness coming from the fructose and glucose. Honey is used as a sticky food substance that can be eaten on it's own, or as an ingredient to a vast variety of other dishes. It is also known to have healing properties, which are talked about on or page covering the benefits of honey.

Honey is commonly produced in domesticated beehives in wax honeycombs, that are maintained by beekeepers. The bees gather together in the hive as a colony and then come to and from it, collecting nectar and bringing it back to the honeycomb where they produce honey through a process that is called regurgitation. The honey is then built up within the honeycomb.

Nectar itself is made up mainly of sucrose and water. Bees add enzyme that create additional chemical compounds, inverting the sucrose into fructose and glucose, and then evaporate the water so that the resulting product won't spoil, quite incredible really.

Here is what honey is made of:

• 80% of honey is natural sugar, primarily fructose and glucose. Due to there being so much fructose in it, honey is actually sweeter than the table sugar that we are used to using at home.
• 18% of honey is water. The more water there is in honey, the poorer it's quality.
• 2% of honey that remains is composed of vitamins, minerals, pollen and protein.

To find out the vitamins and minerals in honey, click here.

Is honey good for you?

One of the main questions when it comes to honey and whether or not it is a sensible thing to have in the diet, is 'is honey good for you?'. Like anything it can be good in moderation, but bad if consumed excessively. Too much honey is not toxic like various vitamins and minerals in foods, but it is made from pure sugar, making it incredibly sweet. Honey is something that is made one hundred per cent naturally, as we have talked about in the above section, organic honey is it's purest form, but be careful what it is you are buying as there are various types of honey that have a lot of additives in them, as well as artificial versions. If you are a diabetic, or somebody who should not be eating a lot of sweet things, then honey is not going to be good for you, but for everybody else then yes it is a great natural product that will not do you any harm if consumed in moderation.

One important thing to bear in mind is that honey is not good for babies, this is because there is a form of bacteria that can sometimes be found in it that their bodies are unable to breakdown.

Remember that there are always going to be different types of honey available when you go shopping for it. In order to find out exactly how many calories are in the product that you are going to buy, and then subsequently consume, you should be checking the label on the jar. The nutritional information of the product will be on the label. This is going to tell you exactly how many calories are in it, as well as inform you as to what else is found in it, in the form of nutritional benefits and other ingredients. There will likely be differences from product to product as how many calories in honey can depend on what other ingredients are included.

More than honey calories

As you will see on the menu down the left hand side of the page, there is much more to our website than just information on honey calories. If you have found yourself asking how many calories in honey then there is a high chance that you will find some of the other free information that we have on the site useful, so please take the time to have a quick look around while you are online, or bookmark us so that you can come back in the future.

You may also find out page all about the health benefits of honey useful as well. Hopefully you will have found out the answers you were seeking when it comes to calories honey contains, and also as to whether honey is good for you or not.