Honey Honey

Honey has been a part of the human diet for almost 8000 years now. It found earliest mention in Sumerian tablets, and then in recorded history in the ancient texts of Egypt, in 5500 BC. By 2600 BC, the science and art of cultivating bees to obtain honey was very much a part of Egyptian culture. Found to have naturally sweetening qualities, not to mention medicinal, cosmetic food preservation and scores of other uses, honey soon became an important part of the life and culture of the times.

It also found wide use as a tradable commodity, in fact a commercial account of the era states 110 pots of honey as equivalent in value as an ox or an ass. The use of honey traveled from Egypt, Babylon and Sumeria to Asia Minor, from where, it is believed, the Aryans took honey to India. In the Indus Valley and the flourishing Vedic culture there, it slowly became associated with religious rites as one of the purest foods known to man. It became an important part of Vedic rites, religious scriptures and found immense use in Ayurveda, in the medicinal systems of the time.

In the twenty first century BC, honey finds mention in Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform writings, the Hittite code, and in the sacred writings of India, the Vedas.

As a medicinal food, it finds mention in ancient Babylonian tablets, as a recipe for `electuaries’ – honey based medicines … which is also mentioned in the works of Pliny the Elder in a first century, - the recipe includes powdered bees and is recommended as a cure for dropsy and gall bladder stones.

In Greek culture, honey is considered food for the Gods and refereed to as Ambrosia, the golden nectar. It finds mention in several classical texts like Iliad, Odyssey, not to mention philosophical, political and social treatise like, the Deipnosophists of Athenaeums, and in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, and others. In more practical, daily life, it was used in cookery, even to the extent of making it the basic recipe for preparation of sweets, confectionery and delicacies. Given the fact that it takes a great amount of hard work to make honey (To produce just one pound of honey, a bee needs to travel more than 49,803 miles -twice the circumference of the earth - and visit more than two million blossoms.) the ancients must have had a sophisticated system of apiculture in place to be able to produce such large quantities.

Civilizations across the world have considered honey scared and magical, largely because of its purity and also because no one was quite sure how it was made. It was made into an intoxicating drink…Mead, (which was one of the things the bride’s father was supposed to supply to the groom for a full month after marriage- thus starting the tradition of honey moon in ancient Babylon). Mead was otherwise consumed during festivals and also offered to Gods.

The fact that honey does not go bad even for centuries, if properly preserved, has also served to make it into everybody’s idea of a divine food. Archeologists found a sealed jar of honey in a tomb in Egypt in 1800, and on opening, it was fund to be tasting perfect, even though it was thousands of years old. The importance of honey in various fields of daily life was appreciated for centuries, across civilizations. In discovering the new world, when the Spaniards reached the Americas in the sixteenth century, they found that the `natives’ of the continent had already develop bee-culture and were already consuming honey. In fact they had distinct specie of bees that were cultivated there. In 1638, the White invaders went ahead and introduced European honey bees to the New England colonies, and these were subsequently called `white Man’s bees’.

Scientifically speaking due to its higher monosaccharide composition, honey has greater power of sweetening than even sugar. But it contains fewer carbohydrates on weight basis (304 calories per 100 grams while refined sugar contains 400 calories per 100 grams). In addition it contains 38.5% fructose, 31% glucose, 17% water, and a number of other nutrients like carbohydrates, minerals, proteins, amino-acids besides.

As a medicinal base, almost all civilizations, old and new, have used honey for centuries. Ayurveda treats it as food for health while even ancient medicine systems used it both an external applicator for some conditions, as well as an oral medicine. In India it is believed that cooking honey will break down amino acids and cause ama or acidity in the system. Besides, the age of the honey is also important in the Indian food system. Young honey (less than six months old), is healing for people with pitta characteristics. Fresh honey is actually best for everyone, but then it can be consumed with foods that counter its negative properties like cold and dry basic nature. . Accompanied, for example, with sesame seeds, it can help warm the system. With yoghurt, it serves to enhance the astringent properties. Adding honey to boiled milk, serves to render warmth and drying qualities to the milk.

In all forms, at all times, one may be sure that there are very few people who can resists the temptation of this warm, golden liquid…that has not been called the nectar fit for Gods for nothing.