Honey Fights Cholesterol as Well as Some Fruits and Vegetables

Don't like spinach? Try honey. It contains about the same level of plaque-fighting antioxidants as the leafy green stuff. And according to research presented at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, the range of antioxidants in honey is comparable to that in apples, bananas, oranges and strawberries.

A five-week study of blood from 25 men between the ages of 18 -- 68 indicates that drinking a mixture of water and honey, about four tablespoons per 16-ounce glass, improved the antioxidant levels in their blood. Nicki Engeseth, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who conducted the study, says this means the sweet stuff may have the potential to protect against heart disease.

"It looks like honey is having a mild protective effect," Engeseth said. She added, however, that this should not be taken as an excuse to avoid fruits and vegetables.

Although it's been known for some time that honey contains varying levels of antioxidants -- with dark honey generally having the most -- this is the first in vivo study to consider how honey may affect human blood.

An earlier in vitro study by Engeseth's lab, which prompted the current research, showed that the darker the honey, the better it was at lifting antioxidant levels in the blood. The honeys tested (from darkest to lightest) were Buckwheat, Hawaiian Christmas Berry, Tupelo, Soybean, Clover, Fireweed and Acacia.

Engeseth's research group is now in the middle of a 12-week study with rabbits to determine if honey has an inhibitory effect on atherosclerosis, a form of heart disease often referred to as hardening of the arteries, a leading cause of death in the United States. She expects that results from the rabbit testing could be "more dramatic" than those of the shorter human blood study.

To get the same amount of antioxidants from honey that you would from some fruits and vegetables, you would have to eat an equivalent per-weight amount of honey, Engeseth pointed out. As that might be excessive, she noted, "People could incorporate more honey in places where they might be using some sort of sweetening agent, like sugar, and this might contribute a significant amount of dietary phenolics."

Phenolics are chemical compounds that inhibit oxidation. Higher phenolic contents in foods tend to generate higher antioxidant levels.

Engeseth's research group at Urbana is currently collaborating with scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago to evaluate honey's ability to inhibit oral pathogenic bacteria, like Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans), which can cause tooth cavities.

"Some types of honey seem to be protective against these bacteria," Engeseth said. "Sage honey and Tupelo honey are two of the tested honeys to show the most inhibitory effects." Both fall in the middle of the dark to light range of honeys.

The research on inhibition of bacteria is still ongoing and the results are only preliminary, Engeseth cautioned.

Engeseth's group also looked at the antioxidant level in wine made with honey, which is called mead. "It's sort of comparable to white wine in terms of its antioxidant capability but it doesn't come anywhere close to red wine," Engeseth said. Mead is popular as a homemade wine.

The National Honey Board provided funding for Engeseth's research.

# # #

The paper on this research, AGFD 44, will be presented at 11:00 a.m., Monday, Aug. 19, at the Marriott Copley Place, Salon C, during the symposium, "Bioactives in Food and their Health Effects."

Nicki Engeseth, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of food chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, in Urbana, Ill.

-- Marvin Coyner

AGFD 44 Honey as a natural source of health promoting compoundsNicki J Engeseth, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, [email protected]

Honey has been used since ancient times as a flavorful sweetener and for therapeutic and medicinal effects. Recently, consumer's demand for natural, healthy products has driven renewed interest in health benefits of honey. Honeys from various floral sources were shown to protect against oxidative deterioration in foods. Our recent studies have investigated honey as a source of dietary antioxidants. ORAC values of honey (per gram) are similar to those of many fruits and vegetables. Honey also inhibited serum lipoprotein oxidation in vitro. Honey is chemically complex; many components of honey may contribute to its observed bioactivity. Acute antioxidant effect of consumption of water or black tea with buckwheat honey was assessed in a controlled human intervention study. Plasma antioxidant status was analyzed and serum oxidizability was measured ex vivo. Studies to investigate the potential impact of long-term effects of consumption of honey are underway.

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, Aug. 20, 1:00 p.m., Eastern Time

AGFD 44

Honey as a natural source of health promoting compounds Nicki J Engeseth, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, [email protected]

* Briefly explain in lay language what you have done, why it is significant and its implications, particularly to the general public.

Previous investigations in our laboratory have included the impact of honey against oxidative deterioration in foods. We have demonstrated that honey from different floral sources has been effective to varying degrees at protecting against browning reactions in fruits and vegetables and by one measure we have demonstrated that honey is protective against lipid oxidation in meats. We have recently focused on honey as a source of dietary antioxidants.

We have established the ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) values for honey - a measure of water soluble antioxidant capacity. This has been of significance particularly as the ORAC assay is more accurate than other measures previously used to determine antioxidant capacity of honey and it allows for comparison across laboratories of antioxidant capacities of various substances. Honey is in the range of some commonly eaten fruits and vegetables on a per gram basis in terms of antioxidant capacity. Although one would not consume honey to such an extent as fruits and vegetables, and we do not support substitution of honey for fruit and vegetable consumption, it points out the potential for honey to contribute as a dietary source of antioxidants. Additionally we have chemically characterized the honeys from different floral sources for what substances contribute antioxidant capacity. Antioxidant capacity is highly correlated with total phenolics. Phenolic profiles of various honeys will be shown and differences will be highlighted. We have used the honeys in in vitro assays to determine that honey has the potential to protect against copper-catalyzed lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation in human blood serum. We compared the ability of 7 different honeys in this assay and in general, the darker colored, higher antioxidant honeys inhibited oxidation to a greater degree. Although this does not truely show what happens upon consumption - it is in vitro - it does point out that honey has the potential to protect against LDL oxidation in the blood. From here we progressed to a short-term human intervention trial where honey and black tea alone and in combination were fed to 25 males after a 12-hour fast. Blood collection indicated a slight protective effect against oxidation in the blood of subjects consuming honey (in water) or honey plus black tea. Although these results show only slight enhancement of antioxidant capacity of the blood after honey consumption - it is important to keep in mind that the blood is designed to resist acute changes in various oxidation/reduction parameters - thus one may not expect to see much response in a short term study. We have begun a long-term feeding study in a rabbit atherosclerosis model. Upon feeding of cholesterol, rabbits develop atherosclerotic plaque. Addition of honey to the diet is being investigated to see if it is possible to retard plaque development and/or improve various blood parameters, such as cholesterol levels (HDL/LDL cholesterol ratios, etc) over a 12-week feed. Initial blood results will be presented.

Other biologically relevant aspects of our honey research is that we have demonstrated via the Ames assay that honey is not mutagenic. It was also demonstrated that honey was antimutagenic against a commonly encountered food mutagen, however, the sugar analogue was also antimutagenic. We had expected honey to be higher in antimutagenic potential than sugar due to its greater antioxidant capacity, but that was not the case. We are also collaborating with researchers at University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) to demonstrate the impact of various honeys on the inhibition of oral pathogenic bacteria. This will be briefly summarized.

Just to clarify the ORAC values being similar to those of common fruits and veggies on a per gram basis. Our honeys ranged from 3-~17umoleTE/g while those of strawberries are reported to be 15, spinach 13, oranges 8, bananas 3 and apples 3 umole TE/g.

* How new is this work and how does it differ from that of others who may be doing similar research?

Our food oxidation work has been published for some time now. Our health research is quite new. As far as we know, there is only one other group at Davis that has conducted a feeding trial somewhat like ours - but the experimental design and methodology is different. They are also funded by the National Honey Board as we are. They are presenting some of this work at IFT in June.

The ORACs and LDL oxidation work just was published in J. Ag. and Food Chem 50(10)3050-3055.

Our chemical characterization work was recently submitted to J. Ag and Food Chem as was the antimutagenicity work. As far as we know - both of these are different from what has been done previously. Our chemical antioxidant characterization is similar in some ways to various phenolic analytical work that has been published on honey, but this is different honeys and it represents a much more comprehensive antioxidant analysis work. The antimutagenicity work also demonstrated that sugar has a potential to be antimutagenic as well, in an uncooked state - this has not been found in the literature. We know that there may be another group to investigate various properties of honey related to mutagenicity, also funded by NHB, but to our knowledge this is a totally different study.