Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Honey: Nature's Wonder Sugar

Transcript

Honey: Nature's Wonder Sugar · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: there's Chuck. Jerry's here barely and this is stuff you
0:17
Speaker 1: should know. Well, we should explain what that means. It's
0:21
Speaker 1: very ambiguous and strange sound. Jerry had a poor internet connection.
0:27
Speaker 1: It was a few minutes later. That's it. She's barely here. Yeah,
0:30
Speaker 1: mystery solved. Feel it feels tenuous too, that she's just
0:35
Speaker 1: barely hanging on by her fingernails. Well, no, I think
0:38
Speaker 1: I don't know. That internet connection just sounded dodgy, That's
0:41
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. She came in like Houston, We're have
0:44
Speaker 1: a problem. You know that internet connection sound all right?
0:49
Speaker 1: Sounds like Apola thirteen. I'm pretty excited about this one.
0:53
Speaker 1: Me too. I even ate some honey for lunch today.
0:58
Speaker 1: I had a little dab at breck at brett Key, okay,
1:01
Speaker 1: which I don't usually eat, but I ate another toast
1:03
Speaker 1: with a a spun honey spread. Good for you man.
1:07
Speaker 1: So spun honey? Are you talking about the creamed honey?
1:09
Speaker 1: Is that what I'm hearing now? Yeah? Creamed spun or
1:13
Speaker 1: I think there's one more word for it. But we
1:17
Speaker 1: always called it spun honey growing up, and boy is
1:20
Speaker 1: it good. And guess what it is just as helpful,
1:25
Speaker 1: has just as many helpful properties as regular honey doesn't.
1:28
Speaker 1: Spinning it or the process of getting into that state
1:30
Speaker 1: doesn't change it at all. Yeah, it's like honey in
1:33
Speaker 1: a different format. Like if you had a really great song,
1:36
Speaker 1: like um uh play that funky music white Boy, and
1:41
Speaker 1: you had it on eight track, but you also had
1:43
Speaker 1: it on record. It's the same song. It's just in
1:45
Speaker 1: two different formats, right, yeah, same thing. Yeah, I like that.
1:49
Speaker 1: I really dislike that song though I really do too, actually, um,
1:54
Speaker 1: although I have a great memory of it. Um, I
1:58
Speaker 1: guess sometimes around Piedmont Park it must have been St.
2:00
Speaker 1: Patrick's say this, Like car full of dudes came up.
2:04
Speaker 1: They were wearing like green wigs and everything. They were
2:06
Speaker 1: ready to throw down for St. Patrick's Day, and they
2:09
Speaker 1: were blaring that song and like everybody in the car
2:12
Speaker 1: was singing it, having like the best time, and then
2:17
Speaker 1: it totally was. And then as they got out of
2:19
Speaker 1: the car, all of them are like just like looking
2:20
Speaker 1: down the streets, still like going to the bar, and
2:23
Speaker 1: one of them like stopped kind of and like turned
2:25
Speaker 1: around and made eye contact with me. It was I
2:29
Speaker 1: think he'll be embarrassed for the rest of his life
2:31
Speaker 1: about that. I didn't even stare him down. He just
2:35
Speaker 1: he initiated that embarrassing situation. So he you could tell
2:39
Speaker 1: he felt some shame because you were just looking at
2:41
Speaker 1: him a little bit and again not staring them down.
2:44
Speaker 1: You know, me, I'll stare somebody down, but not these guys.
2:48
Speaker 1: This was this was he initiated it. But hey, good
2:51
Speaker 1: for them. I bet they had a blast. So honey,
2:54
Speaker 1: I think is what we were originally talking about, right, Yeah,
2:57
Speaker 1: and the Grabster helped us with this one. And this
2:59
Speaker 1: was my commission because Emily is very much into you know,
3:05
Speaker 1: she's gotten very much into her herbs and growing herbs
3:07
Speaker 1: and natural remedies and things, and honey is a big
3:11
Speaker 1: part of that. And although we are not bee keeping yet,
3:15
Speaker 1: that could be on the docket for us. I hope. So, man,
3:17
Speaker 1: I think bee keeping is one of the neatest things
3:19
Speaker 1: you can do all but it's so relaxing. Yeah, she's
3:23
Speaker 1: she's interested in it, and uh so that might happen.
3:27
Speaker 1: Tell me how it goes, because she doesn't I will Okay, yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: I'll follow it. Um. We've actually done an entire episode
3:32
Speaker 1: on bee keeping. H It was one of our best,
3:35
Speaker 1: if you ask me, certainly our most homespun episode by far. Um.
3:40
Speaker 1: So we're not going to talk too much about bee keeping,
3:42
Speaker 1: but you pretty much can't discuss honey without also talking
3:46
Speaker 1: at least a little bit about bee keeping. It's so
3:49
Speaker 1: bee keeping adjacent it would be weird to not mention it.
3:53
Speaker 1: But I just want to say, if you have not
3:55
Speaker 1: heard our bee keeping episode, or you haven't heard it
3:57
Speaker 1: in a while, go listen to it, because it's a
3:59
Speaker 1: really really good app Do we do bees and be
4:02
Speaker 1: bee keeping? Yes? Yeah, we've done bees beekeeping now honey. Yeah,
4:06
Speaker 1: and one of our TV show episodes was about bees.
4:10
Speaker 1: It was one of the sillier episodes. I think it was. Yeah,
4:16
Speaker 1: that's probably what was silly. I think you had a
4:17
Speaker 1: good eye for the absurd for that show. And I
4:22
Speaker 1: mean that in a complimentary way. Oh I took it
4:24
Speaker 1: that way. Okay. I love absurdist comedy and you nailed it. Um,
4:28
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about Honey. Ed helped
4:30
Speaker 1: us with this one. I think you just said and
4:32
Speaker 1: I think he did about the best most clinical description
4:37
Speaker 1: of honey that you could possibly come up with. Where's
4:42
Speaker 1: that was that? Like his definition? Yeah, I mean he
4:45
Speaker 1: talks about basically what honey is and how it's made.
4:48
Speaker 1: Oh so you're just saying start from take it from
4:50
Speaker 1: the top basically. But I thought the way he did
4:53
Speaker 1: it was like, here's here. It's totally unambiguous, completely understandable,
4:58
Speaker 1: and it's just a it's a good descriptor of honey
5:01
Speaker 1: and how it's made. Yeah, this is this is good
5:03
Speaker 1: stuff by the grabster. Uh So yeah, a bit of
5:06
Speaker 1: a refresher though. But we all know that bees like
5:09
Speaker 1: to fly around to different flowers and stick their face
5:12
Speaker 1: in them and dance all over them and do kind
5:14
Speaker 1: of fun things. Uh. And there is a sugary liquid
5:19
Speaker 1: called nectar in flowering plants, and bees are wild about
5:23
Speaker 1: the stuff for a lot of reasons. One reason is,
5:28
Speaker 1: like you know, sometimes they just drink it, Like they
5:30
Speaker 1: want to save that stuff and what's called their crop
5:32
Speaker 1: or their honey stomach to bring back to the hive.
5:35
Speaker 1: That's their main job. But when they're out there working
5:37
Speaker 1: all day, they're also like, let me take a little
5:39
Speaker 1: bit of this sweet stuff down for me. I wonder
5:41
Speaker 1: if there's any bees out there seriously that have like
5:44
Speaker 1: a bit of a problem with Yeah, it goes from
5:49
Speaker 1: one for me, three for you, two, three for me,
5:50
Speaker 1: one for you kind of. I wonder if there's some
5:52
Speaker 1: that like just kind of drink it more than others.
5:55
Speaker 1: There's gotta be sure. Yeah, so um yes, But for
5:59
Speaker 1: the most part, when out there harvesting and foraging for nectar,
6:03
Speaker 1: they're using their crop a honey stomach which they can
6:07
Speaker 1: store I think a thousand flowers worth of nectar in
6:12
Speaker 1: that is a lot, a lot of nectar um, which
6:15
Speaker 1: is weird because I saw that it can grow to
6:18
Speaker 1: about a hundred times that size, So a hundred times
6:21
Speaker 1: it's initial size. Holding a thousand flowers worth of nectar,
6:25
Speaker 1: that's just a that's a very efficient um organ. And
6:29
Speaker 1: it just sits there. It's not doing anything. It's not
6:31
Speaker 1: digesting um. It's just basically for carrying back to the hive.
6:36
Speaker 1: By the way, I had the most amazing dad joke
6:40
Speaker 1: that I failed to tell what it should I tell
6:42
Speaker 1: it now. Of course when you said it just popped
6:46
Speaker 1: into my head. That's why I that's why I know
6:47
Speaker 1: that I'm just on the way down comedically. Well that
6:51
Speaker 1: means the podcast is on the way down too. Oh yeah,
6:54
Speaker 1: for sure. Uh you were talking about the bees having
6:57
Speaker 1: the problem with drinking too much honey. I said, well,
7:00
Speaker 1: you know, they could always just go to a B
7:02
Speaker 1: B meeting. Boy, that was good. That wasn't bad. That
7:06
Speaker 1: was a really good one. I don't know, all right, Well,
7:09
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from people terrible or borderline genius. Okay, Well,
7:13
Speaker 1: I'm registering the first vote, and I'm going to say
7:16
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle of those. I was about to say,
7:19
Speaker 1: there's no one between, but of course there is. All right,
7:22
Speaker 1: So you where'd you leave off with eating pollen? That
7:24
Speaker 1: they take the nectar back to their their their nest
7:28
Speaker 1: they're hot. Okay, Well, then I'll chime in here with
7:30
Speaker 1: a pollen part. Bees are obviously accidentally transferring this pollen,
7:36
Speaker 1: but you know, some of this pollen is getting eaten
7:38
Speaker 1: and mixed in with that honey too, because they love it,
7:41
Speaker 1: because it's got protein and fat. And so what you
7:44
Speaker 1: end up with when you go back to the hive
7:47
Speaker 1: is a gut or crop or a honey stomach full
7:50
Speaker 1: of this nectar, a little bit of pollen. There's probably
7:53
Speaker 1: like just dust and things from the air, and they
7:57
Speaker 1: start puking it up into each other. There's mouths chewing
8:01
Speaker 1: on it, some puking it around, transferring it to one
8:04
Speaker 1: another until it's ready for storage, right, which sounds gross
8:10
Speaker 1: it is, But Ed makes a really good point here
8:12
Speaker 1: that um, they're not actually it's not actually be vomit.
8:16
Speaker 1: Honey is not be vomit. And I've I've said that before,
8:19
Speaker 1: so I think I'm kind of being inadvertently taken to
8:21
Speaker 1: task by Ed because again, oh yeah, definitely, I've said
8:26
Speaker 1: that every chance I've ever had. But the again, the
8:30
Speaker 1: the b crop, the honey crop, um is not um digesting.
8:34
Speaker 1: So what they're regurgitating is virtually the same thing that's
8:38
Speaker 1: going in, so it's not really puke, it's just something else.
8:43
Speaker 1: But yes, they are transferring it from mouth to mouth,
8:45
Speaker 1: and as each bee takes another mouthful of nectar and
8:49
Speaker 1: then passes it around, they're chewing it for a little bit,
8:51
Speaker 1: and one of the things they're doing is absorbing some
8:54
Speaker 1: of the moisture inside. They're also mixing in their own enzymes,
8:59
Speaker 1: and what they're doing doing in that sense, they're they're
9:01
Speaker 1: transforming nectar into honey. So honey is a mixture of
9:07
Speaker 1: b enzymes, flower, nectar, pollen, and um that's dehydrated and
9:15
Speaker 1: combines to form brand new compounds. And that's that's what
9:18
Speaker 1: honey is. Yeah, and as we'll see there there can
9:21
Speaker 1: be other things in there because it's nature and these
9:25
Speaker 1: are sort of messy although beautiful processes, so as well
9:29
Speaker 1: as you'll see when we talk about like completely raw
9:31
Speaker 1: and filtered honey, there may be some be legs in
9:34
Speaker 1: there and some other little beep, but there may be
9:36
Speaker 1: a piece of a wing because you know, this is
9:39
Speaker 1: just how things go out there in the wild. And
9:41
Speaker 1: sometimes some bees have really bad days. Yes, that's when
9:45
Speaker 1: they go to the bb meetings. So um, there's there's
9:50
Speaker 1: another way that what we've been talking about is blossom
9:52
Speaker 1: honey what most people think of when they think of honey.
9:54
Speaker 1: There's actually one other way to make honey. And do
9:57
Speaker 1: you remember in our Aunt episode where ants are ranchers
10:00
Speaker 1: of aphids and the aphids suck the juice out of
10:04
Speaker 1: plants and produce honeydew. Well, bees go find that honeydew
10:08
Speaker 1: in some cases and can actually make honey from the
10:11
Speaker 1: sap of the stems leaves and like bark of trees
10:15
Speaker 1: and other plants, and they basically harvest that like they
10:19
Speaker 1: harvest nectar from flowers, and so there's a there's an
10:23
Speaker 1: entirely different way to produce honey that comes straight from
10:26
Speaker 1: the plant, not even from the flowers, and that's called honeydew. Honey, honeydew, honey.
10:31
Speaker 1: Have you ever had that? I don't think I have.
10:33
Speaker 1: I was looking it up to see like what some
10:35
Speaker 1: types of honeydew honey are, and I couldn't find many,
10:38
Speaker 1: and nothing that I found sounded like anything I've had before. Okay, Uh,
10:44
Speaker 1: we should point out that not all bees produce honey. Obviously,
10:48
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different species of bees, and
10:50
Speaker 1: we went over those in great detail in to be episode.
10:54
Speaker 1: But the honey bee is from the genus APIs, and uh,
10:59
Speaker 1: there are some other bees that do make make honey,
11:01
Speaker 1: But like the chief honey bee is the western honeybee.
11:07
Speaker 1: This is the the stud when it comes to making
11:10
Speaker 1: great honey. This is the one we domesticated. This is
11:13
Speaker 1: the one that makes so much honey. They have enough
11:16
Speaker 1: for them, Uh, they have enough for us, and everybody
11:21
Speaker 1: is happy, basically, which is one of the things I
11:23
Speaker 1: love about beekeeping. It seems like one of the she's
11:27
Speaker 1: a few things where we extract something from nature for
11:31
Speaker 1: ourselves where there's enough to go around, and if you
11:34
Speaker 1: do it in the right way, it's uh, it doesn't
11:37
Speaker 1: harm the thing that that gave it to you. Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: that is kind of a beautiful thing about it. And
11:41
Speaker 1: as we'll see, the fact that honey exists is kind
11:45
Speaker 1: of miraculous. And that's just kind of like the cherry
11:48
Speaker 1: on the top chuck, that we can harvest honey without
11:52
Speaker 1: harming or um, the bees or taking some of their
11:56
Speaker 1: head stash for us, Like they just make a little
11:59
Speaker 1: extra for us. And when we can take that, I
12:01
Speaker 1: think it's wonderful too. So yeah, you know, you mentioned
12:04
Speaker 1: we have a whole episode on beekeeping, but um, as
12:06
Speaker 1: a short refresher, this has been happening for a long time.
12:10
Speaker 1: They were people were collecting honey, um, you know, in
12:15
Speaker 1: the Mesolithic period, so they're like cave drawings that depict
12:19
Speaker 1: this stuff. So we've always liked the honey as humans. Uh.
12:23
Speaker 1: And then you know, there's a belief that it may
12:25
Speaker 1: have just like beekeeping, may have happened by accident when
12:29
Speaker 1: a hive maybe set up in a jar or basket
12:32
Speaker 1: or something that was outside at somebody's place and they went, hey,
12:36
Speaker 1: wait a minute, like this awesome honey is now in
12:39
Speaker 1: this jar on my back porch. Like I wonder if
12:42
Speaker 1: we could do this like intentionally and do it on purpose,
12:46
Speaker 1: and they kind of just started doing it. That's what
12:48
Speaker 1: the thought is at least. Yeah, and they think that
12:50
Speaker 1: originally maybe some of the earliest earliest artificial hives were um,
12:56
Speaker 1: some sort of clay pod or something that they were
12:58
Speaker 1: purposed for that. Um. Sometimes maybe they came across the
13:02
Speaker 1: hive and they're like, this is pretty firmly attached to
13:04
Speaker 1: this stick. I'm just gonna take the whole stick home
13:07
Speaker 1: with me farm it like that, you know. Um, Yeah,
13:10
Speaker 1: there's there's regardless. At some point, somebody probably just stumbled
13:14
Speaker 1: upon this and then in very short order, um, it
13:17
Speaker 1: started to spread. Um. They think that bee keeping at
13:22
Speaker 1: least goes back, um about five thousand years ago. Um
13:26
Speaker 1: there's evidence of it in Egypt, the Indus Valley, and Mesopotamia,
13:29
Speaker 1: and then China. About eight hundred years after that, evidence
13:33
Speaker 1: of bee keeping uh starts up and you would guess
13:36
Speaker 1: the people of China and the people of Mesopotamia may
13:40
Speaker 1: not have been in contact at the same time or
13:43
Speaker 1: at that time, So it's really possible that bee keeping
13:46
Speaker 1: just kind of independently grew up or evolved in different
13:51
Speaker 1: societies and cultures around the world independently. Yeah, and it
13:55
Speaker 1: was something because you're using like clay jars and things
13:58
Speaker 1: like you were saying you didn't need to forge metal
14:01
Speaker 1: that wasn't super expensive. It was something that uh there
14:05
Speaker 1: was a low barrier to entry, I guess is what
14:07
Speaker 1: you would say these days. So and it was really
14:11
Speaker 1: delicious and as we'll soon find out, super beneficial. So
14:14
Speaker 1: it became a big deal. Yeah. Um. One of the
14:17
Speaker 1: earliest artificial hives is still um pretty much the symbol
14:22
Speaker 1: for a bee hive. If you look at any uh
14:25
Speaker 1: a a Milan Winnie the Pooh illustrations. Yeah, um, like
14:30
Speaker 1: it's called it's it's basically a cone, a basket e
14:34
Speaker 1: cone turned upside down. So you take an ice cream cone,
14:37
Speaker 1: turn it upside down on the ice cream part, make
14:39
Speaker 1: it kind of bubbly and there you go. That's a skep. Yeah,
14:43
Speaker 1: it's great. That's why where you get your beehive hair
14:46
Speaker 1: do is named after these things, and you know, things
14:50
Speaker 1: just advanced from there. Uh. And we'll talk a little
14:53
Speaker 1: bit about that later, but I say we take a
14:55
Speaker 1: break now and then talk about what's in honey and
14:59
Speaker 1: what makes it so good for us? It sounds good
15:14
Speaker 1: learn it's stuff with Joshua John Okay. So the question
15:36
Speaker 1: of what is in honey is very easy to answer
15:39
Speaker 1: because it's almost all sugar. Uh. There is some water
15:43
Speaker 1: in there, although you know, like we mentioned, part of
15:45
Speaker 1: the process of getting uh to the honey state is
15:50
Speaker 1: to remove as much moisture as possible, but you still
15:53
Speaker 1: need some moisture. Um. So it's you know, something that
15:56
Speaker 1: you can squirt out of a plastic bear sure, uh,
16:00
Speaker 1: which you can later make a bong out of. I
16:04
Speaker 1: think most everyone that was in college when True Romance
16:07
Speaker 1: came out probably tried that totally. And by the way,
16:09
Speaker 1: so long sixth grade classes that were just listening to
16:12
Speaker 1: this episode. Poor teacher who just ran to the front
16:16
Speaker 1: of the class. Nothing, nothing, nothing, I'm sorry. What's a bong? Um?
16:24
Speaker 1: Was that Ralph Wigham? It was? It was a pretty
16:26
Speaker 1: good win. So it's mostly sugar, and it's believe it
16:30
Speaker 1: or not, it's mostly simple sugar, fruit toast, and glucose.
16:34
Speaker 1: There are some complex sugars. But that's not to say
16:37
Speaker 1: just because honey is mainly just sugar and simple sugar
16:41
Speaker 1: that it's not complex, because it really is. It is
16:44
Speaker 1: super complex. It's again, the word miraculous just keeps bringing
16:48
Speaker 1: to mind, and I'm definitely not one of those intelligent
16:51
Speaker 1: design people. I just think honey is something really special though,
16:55
Speaker 1: and so like, yes, it does have the simple sugars,
16:58
Speaker 1: it has very complex sugars. Let me throw out a
17:00
Speaker 1: couple of these names just to kind of blow your mind.
17:03
Speaker 1: There's malto pentaos. I didn't add the extra tea in there.
17:09
Speaker 1: I wanted to so bad. Galactose, that's an amazing name.
17:13
Speaker 1: There's also iso malto trios. These are not your average
17:18
Speaker 1: everyday sugars like fruit, toast and glucose, both of which
17:21
Speaker 1: are found in honey. But that's just the sugars. And again,
17:24
Speaker 1: the simple sugars combined with other enzymes and the bees
17:27
Speaker 1: mouths to create these much more sophisticated sugars, some of
17:31
Speaker 1: which have like actual protective health properties we found, But
17:35
Speaker 1: that's just the sugars. There's also amino acids enzymes, polyphenols, flavonoids.
17:42
Speaker 1: And when you start looking at all of the different
17:44
Speaker 1: things that pop up in honey that's in honey, and
17:48
Speaker 1: you look at each one individually and you look them up,
17:51
Speaker 1: you will find that they do all sorts of amazing things.
17:54
Speaker 1: And when you put all of it together, you just
17:56
Speaker 1: can't help but step back and say, honey is miraculous. Yeah,
18:00
Speaker 1: and let's have a spoonful. Yeah, exactly. That's the second
18:03
Speaker 1: thought that follows uh it is. It has, in fact,
18:06
Speaker 1: you mentioned amino acids. It has all nine all nine
18:10
Speaker 1: essential amino acids, which are the ones that we need
18:13
Speaker 1: that we don't make in our own body, so we
18:16
Speaker 1: have to eat them. Um it is. And we'll get
18:19
Speaker 1: to the healthy stuff in like twelve seconds. But we
18:22
Speaker 1: do need to mention that one of the other great
18:24
Speaker 1: things about honey is that it's I don't know about
18:27
Speaker 1: last forever. Maybe I know they've pulled honey out of
18:30
Speaker 1: like Egyptian tombs and reconstituted it to where it was fine,
18:34
Speaker 1: so maybe it does last forever. But it is acidic.
18:37
Speaker 1: It has antibacterial properties, so that means honey will last
18:41
Speaker 1: you a long long time. And if you find an
18:44
Speaker 1: old hard you know, lump of honey in a jar
18:48
Speaker 1: in your house that you forgot about. You can probably
18:51
Speaker 1: make that honey awesome again with very little effort. Yeah, supposedly,
18:54
Speaker 1: what you do is you just throw it in that jar,
18:57
Speaker 1: and you take that jar and you put it in
18:59
Speaker 1: like a bath of very hot tap water. Do not
19:02
Speaker 1: heat it up on the stove. Just put it in
19:04
Speaker 1: hot tap water and very slowly that that chunk of
19:07
Speaker 1: honey will turn back into liquid gold a k A. Honey. Yeah,
19:12
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of mixed messaging around um, honey
19:15
Speaker 1: being toxic if it's heated beyond a certain point because
19:21
Speaker 1: the you know, there there's ancient wisdom that says it
19:24
Speaker 1: becomes toxic. Other people these days say now it doesn't.
19:28
Speaker 1: So I was like, you know, I mean, surely there's
19:30
Speaker 1: a study about this, and I didn't really find one.
19:34
Speaker 1: I found one about lab rats and honey heated with gee,
19:39
Speaker 1: but that wasn't only honey that sounds and has done it.
19:44
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I just didn't have time
19:46
Speaker 1: to find the study because it seems like a simple
19:48
Speaker 1: enough thing to research, Like you heat the honey and
19:52
Speaker 1: and feed it to a monkey, and see if it dies.
19:57
Speaker 1: So I'm kidding, by the way, but the thing is
20:00
Speaker 1: chuck as you raised something that came up for me
20:02
Speaker 1: later on, UM that I'll just put here, like the
20:05
Speaker 1: stuff we do to animals is unconscionable. A hundred years
20:10
Speaker 1: from now, our cohort is going to be looked at
20:12
Speaker 1: as just so barbaric. And one of the things that
20:16
Speaker 1: kind of raised my hackles was UM. As as we'll
20:19
Speaker 1: see later on, one of the things they think honey
20:21
Speaker 1: can help with is UM neurological disorders or mental imbalances
20:26
Speaker 1: and UM. They test that stuff on rats and one
20:29
Speaker 1: of the things they found was that UM in rats,
20:33
Speaker 1: it recovers hopeless behavior, sorry, in mice that have undergone
20:37
Speaker 1: restraints stress for twenty one days. And I was like,
20:41
Speaker 1: restraints stress doesn't sound very good. What is that? They
20:44
Speaker 1: put the mouse in a tube where it can't move
20:47
Speaker 1: any of its limbs or body or anything, and they
20:51
Speaker 1: kept it there for twenty one days. And you think
20:54
Speaker 1: being put in a tube as a human being for
20:57
Speaker 1: twenty one days where you couldn't move, like I can
20:59
Speaker 1: bear breathed, just saying that out loud, right, that's twenty
21:03
Speaker 1: one human days. Imagine what twenty one days is in
21:06
Speaker 1: the length of a mouse's life. And then, by the way,
21:09
Speaker 1: after they studied the mouse after taking out the tube,
21:12
Speaker 1: they probably killed it shortly after that, so that mouse's
21:15
Speaker 1: entire life was spent under restraint stress in a tube.
21:20
Speaker 1: And this is just one of the myriad things that
21:22
Speaker 1: we do to animals. And the more I just kind
21:24
Speaker 1: of come across the stuff casually mentioned in this really dry,
21:28
Speaker 1: clinical tone and pure reviewed papers, the more I'm just like,
21:31
Speaker 1: this is, I don't know that we can justify this.
21:34
Speaker 1: And yes, we've come up with so many amazing things
21:36
Speaker 1: to help humanity along, but I really think we should
21:40
Speaker 1: be we should be allocating a significant amount of our
21:44
Speaker 1: research efforts to figuring out how to not use animals
21:48
Speaker 1: to come up with those same amazing breakthroughs, because it's
21:51
Speaker 1: just wrong. It's cruel and wrong, and there's there's really
21:55
Speaker 1: basically no justification for it in the greater scheme of things.
21:59
Speaker 1: And that's my soapbox. I think that's your first soapbox moment. Oh,
22:05
Speaker 1: it definitely is, now that you mentioned it. Sure, all right?
22:07
Speaker 1: That means we're going to toast uh some tomorrow. That
22:12
Speaker 1: is good for your body as well. H what's your
22:15
Speaker 1: tomorrow that you like? Congratulate? You know, I got a
22:17
Speaker 1: few of them. That's going to be a future, like
22:20
Speaker 1: very near future topic, by the way, Okay, cool, I've
22:22
Speaker 1: gotten very into tomorrow. Mine is Montenegro. Montenegro is is
22:28
Speaker 1: so good and it's really good to mix cocktails with two.
22:31
Speaker 1: It sure is a little bourbon and to tomorrow you're
22:34
Speaker 1: some rye and tomorrow. A little bit of that it'll fix.
22:36
Speaker 1: It'll fix a mouse that's been in um restraints stress
22:40
Speaker 1: for twenty and one days. Right up, some orange bitters,
22:43
Speaker 1: A little shake of that. Yeah, it's good stuff even
22:46
Speaker 1: just also choked, by the way, just a little bit
22:48
Speaker 1: of amorrow Montenegro, like I think it ounces of that
22:52
Speaker 1: and some good seltzer is really good on its own too.
22:56
Speaker 1: That's a digestive and a half. It definitely is. Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: that's great. Uh. You know what. Recently I went to
23:03
Speaker 1: l A just for the day to see our friend
23:05
Speaker 1: Ben Harrison and our our friend and uh booking agent
23:10
Speaker 1: Josh Lingren and are my friend Adam Pranica. You'd love Adam.
23:14
Speaker 1: You just haven't hung out with them much. But we
23:16
Speaker 1: went to Musso and Frank and I'll just say this,
23:19
Speaker 1: and I haven't been drinking much lately, but we had
23:21
Speaker 1: a day and we're way too drunk to be and
23:24
Speaker 1: Musso and Frank I could tell from your Instagram posts
23:26
Speaker 1: from it. Yeah, it just looks really happy in this
23:31
Speaker 1: great big meal and drinks and all this stuff at
23:34
Speaker 1: one of the oldest restaurants in Hollywood. And at the
23:36
Speaker 1: very end, Ben Harrison just shouts out, is that it.
23:41
Speaker 1: We're like, yes, nothing else, and Ben went four tomorrows.
23:44
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so that's how we ended our meal. We're
23:48
Speaker 1: just supposed to put a hangover, so let's not blow
23:50
Speaker 1: all of our knowledge on tomorrow right here, Chuck j alright,
23:56
Speaker 1: So health qualities of honey is where we left off
23:59
Speaker 1: ten minutes a. Uh. There are lots of health benefits
24:03
Speaker 1: and there are lots of studies that back this up,
24:05
Speaker 1: which is great. Um. There are medicinal uses that have
24:08
Speaker 1: been academically studied and and verified. So this isn't like
24:13
Speaker 1: you know, witchy hocum or woo woo stuff like that.
24:16
Speaker 1: Honey is really really good for you. And we've known
24:18
Speaker 1: this for a long time. And one of the things
24:20
Speaker 1: that honey is great for is if you have allergies, uh,
24:24
Speaker 1: if you. They did studies where they looked over the
24:27
Speaker 1: course of a couple of months during allergy season, and
24:30
Speaker 1: it had significant reductions in what's called rhinitis rhinitis, which
24:37
Speaker 1: is you know stuff you know, sneezing, allergy, allergic sort
24:41
Speaker 1: of qualities fear of. And this was like quite a
24:45
Speaker 1: bit of honey. I think it was one gram of
24:48
Speaker 1: honey per kilogram of body weight. A lot of funny,
24:52
Speaker 1: it's a lot of honey, but it works, and you
24:53
Speaker 1: know it's better than uh, some dumb allergy medication. So
24:57
Speaker 1: you remember our immunotherapy episode from very early on, we
25:01
Speaker 1: talked a lot about eating honey to get over allergies,
25:05
Speaker 1: and it totally makes sense because you're exposing yourself to
25:07
Speaker 1: the local pollen. That's why people who say this actually
25:10
Speaker 1: works to get yourself over allergies say it won't. It
25:13
Speaker 1: won't work unless you are eating local honey, meaning like
25:17
Speaker 1: within twenty or I think thirty miles of where you live,
25:20
Speaker 1: because you're you're exposing yourself a little by little to
25:23
Speaker 1: that pollen and your body' is like, oh this is
25:26
Speaker 1: this stuff is not that bad. We won't give you
25:28
Speaker 1: any more allergies. Yeah, And there's a lot of reasons
25:31
Speaker 1: to eat local honey and eat locally period, not the
25:35
Speaker 1: least of which is that's just how it was for
25:39
Speaker 1: gazillion years. Uh what was near you because you couldn't
25:43
Speaker 1: get anywhere else, and that's just sort of the better
25:44
Speaker 1: way to eat. Yeah. I've really gotten into green grapes lately.
25:48
Speaker 1: They're just so good and they're so good for you.
25:50
Speaker 1: Just always have like a bowl of them out. And
25:52
Speaker 1: we just left grape season and this stuff that's out
25:57
Speaker 1: now is just it's so bad. It's just like you're
26:00
Speaker 1: put in your mouth and there's no like pop to it.
26:02
Speaker 1: It just MUSHes, and I'm like, this is not any good. Yeah,
26:06
Speaker 1: it is like an eyeball. It's really, it's like a
26:08
Speaker 1: rotten eyeball basically. So I'm off a grape So I'm
26:12
Speaker 1: trying to find a grape replacement until they come back
26:14
Speaker 1: in season. Grape replacement is not a bad band name.
26:18
Speaker 1: Actually it is a bad band name, But I could
26:19
Speaker 1: see someone naming their band that. That seems like a
26:21
Speaker 1: side project band name. Right. Uh, what about inflammation, that's
26:27
Speaker 1: you know, inflammation We've talked a lot about. That's it's
26:30
Speaker 1: not the root cause of every problem humans have, but
26:33
Speaker 1: inflammation is one of the leading causes of a of
26:36
Speaker 1: a lot of problems that humans have. Definitely, I think
26:38
Speaker 1: we need to do an episode on that. Yeah, totally,
26:41
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean it's behind cardiovascular issues. Your blood
26:44
Speaker 1: pressure might be high. Um, you might have gut problems, arthritis,
26:48
Speaker 1: some types of cancer, and it's your body basically mounting
26:52
Speaker 1: this immune response that is overblown and so you're suffering
26:56
Speaker 1: as a result, and it has all these terrible UM effect. Well,
27:00
Speaker 1: the flavonoids that I mentioned UM are there's a ton
27:04
Speaker 1: of flavonoids, like thirty different flavonoids found and basically all
27:08
Speaker 1: types of honey, just to varying degrees depending on what
27:11
Speaker 1: flowers it came from. And they are antioxidants. We've talked
27:15
Speaker 1: about antioxidants um and whether or not they actually work
27:19
Speaker 1: or not, the jury is still kind of out, but
27:21
Speaker 1: there are some things that flavonoids do that are like
27:24
Speaker 1: this is just demonstrably effective. One of the things they
27:27
Speaker 1: do is go to the genes that produce inflammatory proteins
27:32
Speaker 1: and say, nope, not today, you just you just rest easy,
27:35
Speaker 1: stop making those things. So they block expression of inflammatory proteins.
27:40
Speaker 1: That's just one of the things that you can find
27:42
Speaker 1: in honey. Yeah, a pretty big one if you ask me, uh,
27:48
Speaker 1: if you want, kind of one of the king Daddy's
27:50
Speaker 1: of healthful honeys. You've probably heard of Manuka honey. Um.
27:55
Speaker 1: It seems to have I don't know about exploded, but
27:58
Speaker 1: it seems to have really garnered a lot more um
28:01
Speaker 1: popularity and popularity, garnered popularity whatever, you know what I'm saying.
28:05
Speaker 1: Sure in more recent years, partially because of marketing in
28:09
Speaker 1: pr but partially because Manuka honey is really good for you.
28:13
Speaker 1: This is a monofloral honey, which means, as as we'll
28:16
Speaker 1: talk about a bit more later, that it comes from
28:19
Speaker 1: a single flower as much as possible from New Zealand,
28:24
Speaker 1: and it's got a pretty short period in which this
28:27
Speaker 1: flower flowers, and that makes it a more rare honey.
28:31
Speaker 1: That makes it more expensive, of course, but Manuka honey
28:34
Speaker 1: kind of does all the things that honey does times,
28:39
Speaker 1: you know, with a plus afterward. Yeah. Supposedly, the active
28:42
Speaker 1: ingredient for Manuka honeys anti microbial properties is um methyl
28:47
Speaker 1: glyoxyl um. It's a word as ugly as it sounds
28:52
Speaker 1: spelled out, but it has about a hundred times the
28:55
Speaker 1: amount that other types of honey have, and um, that's
28:59
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they're everybody is so bully
29:01
Speaker 1: on manuka honey. I think the other reason is because
29:04
Speaker 1: it is very rare. The manuka shrub grows in fairly remote,
29:08
Speaker 1: isolated regions of New Zealand, so it's hard to get
29:11
Speaker 1: and that means it's very expensive, so you can sell
29:13
Speaker 1: it for a lot of money. So anything you can
29:15
Speaker 1: say is minuka honey, you can kind of hype, but
29:17
Speaker 1: there does seem to be some some actual like reality
29:21
Speaker 1: behind the hype. Yeah, like there there are people who
29:24
Speaker 1: do this and uh who just like take a spoonful
29:28
Speaker 1: of minuka honey every day as if they're taking their
29:31
Speaker 1: vitamins in the morning or something like that. For sure.
29:33
Speaker 1: And there's another one that's kind of come up recently
29:35
Speaker 1: that has been rivaling Menuka's too alloying honey. It grows
29:40
Speaker 1: in Malaysia. The thing is, Manuka honey is a monofloral honey.
29:44
Speaker 1: As we'll see, it's just made from the manuka, the
29:46
Speaker 1: flowers of the minuka shrub. To allaying um is called
29:50
Speaker 1: jungle honey, like it's just made from whatever is flowering
29:54
Speaker 1: in Malaysia. But supposedly the flowers that are growing in
29:57
Speaker 1: the jungles of Malaysia have a lot of them using
30:00
Speaker 1: properties too. Because people are saying this to a laying
30:03
Speaker 1: it's the hot new product and so long Manuka, you're
30:06
Speaker 1: so over and done with. Yeah, jungle honey is a
30:09
Speaker 1: good song title, yeah, for sure, or maybe I'm just
30:12
Speaker 1: thinking jungle boogie. No jungle honey sounds good. You put
30:16
Speaker 1: honey with any other word and it's gonna make it
30:19
Speaker 1: more appealing. For sure. I love the word jungle. It's
30:22
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. Yeah. You said earlier you were
30:24
Speaker 1: starting your honeyfile, and I was like, you should call
30:27
Speaker 1: all files your honeyfile. Maybe I will. Honey is also
30:32
Speaker 1: good topically, Um, you can put honey, especially something like
30:36
Speaker 1: manuka honey on a skin, knee or something like that. Uh,
30:41
Speaker 1: cuts any kind of stubborn wounds. Uh, it's gonna help
30:45
Speaker 1: out with Um. They've done meta studies on putting honey
30:49
Speaker 1: on topically and a lot of these were Uh it
30:52
Speaker 1: seems like from studies on diabetic foot wounds. This is
30:56
Speaker 1: what ED found. But you know, it healed faster, those
31:00
Speaker 1: less inflammation. Apparently it can reduce nasty odors, and even
31:05
Speaker 1: in diabetic foot wounds, helped reduce the need for amputation. Yeah. Um,
31:10
Speaker 1: apparently that's with just about any honey you could use
31:14
Speaker 1: for wound healing, not just manuka. I saw a paper
31:17
Speaker 1: that said, actually you might not want to use menuka
31:20
Speaker 1: because that methyl glyoxal is something that might actually prevent
31:25
Speaker 1: um a diabetic foot ulcer from healing because it's so
31:28
Speaker 1: potent it might actually like kill off like this the
31:32
Speaker 1: new cells that are trying to form. But other honey
31:35
Speaker 1: has been shown in is honey in general that it
31:38
Speaker 1: actually does help heal diabetic foot ulcers in really any
31:41
Speaker 1: kind of wound. But the reason they say diabetic ulcers
31:45
Speaker 1: because they have so much trouble healing because there's so
31:48
Speaker 1: little circulation being led to that wound site that it
31:52
Speaker 1: just basically just persists. And if you slather some honey
31:55
Speaker 1: on there, you can say goodbye, stubborn wound. Goodbye. We
32:00
Speaker 1: already talked about blood pressure some but we should note
32:03
Speaker 1: that some of the studies have found that it reduces
32:06
Speaker 1: hypertension and women and not men, and that's not to
32:10
Speaker 1: say that it can't in men, but it's in you know,
32:13
Speaker 1: Ed points this out very astutely that honey is just
32:16
Speaker 1: there's a lot of studies and meta studies and things,
32:19
Speaker 1: but you know, it's something that bees make in nature, uh,
32:23
Speaker 1: and that humans collect, So they aren't always the most
32:26
Speaker 1: consistent results when it comes to studies. And there's so
32:29
Speaker 1: many varieties and so many kinds of bees and where
32:33
Speaker 1: they live and then the flowers that they're pollinating and
32:35
Speaker 1: getting that nectar from that. It's uh, just because a
32:40
Speaker 1: study says something, it doesn't mean like that's the end,
32:43
Speaker 1: full stop. Yeah, one way or the other, Like didn't
32:46
Speaker 1: find this property actually helpful or did? Yeah, there just
32:50
Speaker 1: needs to be more studying that. Yes, they need to
32:52
Speaker 1: refine the study of honey, which I think we're in
32:56
Speaker 1: the in the midst of, like right now on this podcast,
33:00
Speaker 1: we're helping move it along. I think what about cancer
33:04
Speaker 1: cancer it's another one they think that um Basically there's
33:07
Speaker 1: there's properties in honey that um create apoptosis, which is
33:11
Speaker 1: programmed cell death, and that they help target cancer tumors
33:17
Speaker 1: to um to go ahead and die, just die, die
33:20
Speaker 1: die tumor um and that's basically how chemotherapy works in
33:24
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. So, yes, it does seem to
33:26
Speaker 1: have some sort of effect on cancer. I saw that. Um.
33:30
Speaker 1: Not only has it has it been shown to work
33:33
Speaker 1: in the lab, like in in cell lines of cancer cells,
33:37
Speaker 1: but that it's it's had some clinical um results as well.
33:42
Speaker 1: But apparently when they go after cancer cells there's something
33:45
Speaker 1: that's called blebbing. And blebbing is where, um, a cell
33:51
Speaker 1: gets pulled away like it's membrane gets pulled away from
33:54
Speaker 1: the cytoskeleton, and there's like a bulge and at that point, um,
33:59
Speaker 1: you have called blebbing, and that cell is in very
34:02
Speaker 1: big trouble. So honey goes after to cancer cells, it
34:07
Speaker 1: makes them bleb Well, you know how I knew it
34:10
Speaker 1: would be something that makes you in trouble is that
34:13
Speaker 1: it's called blebbing. Yeah, exactly. Can't that can't be good. No,
34:17
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm blebbing. That's not a good No
34:20
Speaker 1: one ever say oh, that's fantastic, good for you. Yeah,
34:22
Speaker 1: high bleb Right. You mentioned neurological problems earlier a little bit. Um.
34:28
Speaker 1: Obviously this can be a whole host of things. But
34:32
Speaker 1: they have found and this is another you know area
34:34
Speaker 1: that there needs to be a lot more testing, but
34:36
Speaker 1: the clinical trials have shown some pretty good results and
34:40
Speaker 1: things like uh, you know, depression, dementia in any kind
34:44
Speaker 1: of age related like mental neurological deterioration basically, but even
34:49
Speaker 1: things like convulsions. Uh, they did there was one study
34:53
Speaker 1: in some uh, some senior adults that where they had
34:57
Speaker 1: a placebo control group which had a about greater incidents
35:02
Speaker 1: of dementia than the group that took a daily tablespoon
35:05
Speaker 1: of honey. That is astounding, that's huge. Yeah. Um, that's
35:10
Speaker 1: the kind of study where it's like, no, that's the end.
35:12
Speaker 1: Nobody else needs to do any more, researchers. Everybody eat
35:14
Speaker 1: a tablespoon of honey, and that's actually that raises a
35:17
Speaker 1: good question that a lot of people have. It's like,
35:19
Speaker 1: wait a minute, honey is a sweetener. Yes, it's natural,
35:22
Speaker 1: but it's got tons of sugar in it. So is
35:24
Speaker 1: it really okay to eat a tablespoonful honey a day?
35:28
Speaker 1: And the answer is in the West, especially um, you
35:34
Speaker 1: you should, yes, go ahead and eat a tablespoonful honey
35:37
Speaker 1: a day, but make sure that what you're doing is
35:40
Speaker 1: exchanging the added sugars that you're eating in your diet normally.
35:43
Speaker 1: For that tablespoon, don't just add it to your normal diet.
35:46
Speaker 1: Figure out where you can cut down some sugar and
35:48
Speaker 1: use honey instead. And yes, you will probably be much
35:51
Speaker 1: better off of it long right, because sugar is really
35:53
Speaker 1: not good for us at all. That's great. I think
35:56
Speaker 1: we take our second break here, we come back and
35:59
Speaker 1: we talk about honeycombs, grades of honey. We still got
36:04
Speaker 1: a lot to go over, so let's get to it.
36:19
Speaker 1: Learning stuff with Joshua John. Okay, Chuck, this suddenly turned
36:41
Speaker 1: into a short stuff Go well, I mean we can
36:45
Speaker 1: talk about the honeycomb briefly again. That's in our bee
36:48
Speaker 1: keeping episode, in our b episode, um and with a
36:51
Speaker 1: lot of detail. But uh, basically, you know this, the
36:56
Speaker 1: honeycomb is like that hexagonal cell structure that you see
37:00
Speaker 1: inside the hive, uh, made of that wax that the
37:04
Speaker 1: bees produce. Uh. And they you know, they make cells
37:08
Speaker 1: for storing honey or for housing that queen and the brood.
37:11
Speaker 1: But the important thing as far as the honeycomb goes
37:13
Speaker 1: is that humans came along as far as beekeeping is concerned,
37:18
Speaker 1: and said, you know, let me let me build the
37:20
Speaker 1: framing your house for you and you can come in
37:22
Speaker 1: and add the detail. So we started making these, um,
37:27
Speaker 1: you know, what would you call it, like a form substrate, Oh,
37:32
Speaker 1: look at you, which gives the bees a little bit
37:36
Speaker 1: of a head start. Uh, And then you know the
37:38
Speaker 1: honey is in there. They extract that honey in a centerfuge. Uh,
37:43
Speaker 1: leaves that that honeycomb intact. Although you can get that
37:48
Speaker 1: natural honey if you've seen it in the store with
37:51
Speaker 1: that or maybe at a farmer's market, local farmer's market
37:53
Speaker 1: with a honeycomb floating in that honey. Uh, you can.
37:57
Speaker 1: You can eat that stuff. It's wax. It's not gonna
37:59
Speaker 1: hurt you. Yeah, train it probably makes you feel like
38:02
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart or something. It makes my teeth feel gritty.
38:05
Speaker 1: So I don't like it, but I do know that
38:07
Speaker 1: it is edible for sure. Yeah. One of the things
38:09
Speaker 1: I saw Chuck though, I was like, well wait a minute,
38:11
Speaker 1: beekeepers are like making basically fully formed honeycombs for the
38:16
Speaker 1: bees to to use. This is going to produce some soft,
38:19
Speaker 1: lazy bees. But it turns out there's actually a really
38:22
Speaker 1: good reason to do this, and that is that with
38:24
Speaker 1: bees produce their own wax. They have to eat honey
38:27
Speaker 1: to produce the wax, and they they consume six pounds
38:32
Speaker 1: of honey to make one pound of wax. So by
38:36
Speaker 1: giving them the wax to begin with, you're saving all
38:39
Speaker 1: of that extra honey. They're just gonna keep making that
38:41
Speaker 1: honey and you're gonna get more for it. Yeah, I mean,
38:44
Speaker 1: maybe that's one of the reasons we had that surplus. Probably,
38:47
Speaker 1: I would think. So. Yeah, if you're if you're keeping
38:49
Speaker 1: bees and you're not giving them preformed bees, wax, bees
38:53
Speaker 1: wax cells, you're a chump. Uh. There are lots of
38:58
Speaker 1: different ways to rate or grade honey. We're gonna go
39:01
Speaker 1: over a lot of those now, one of which is
39:04
Speaker 1: how much it's processed. We talked about right out of
39:07
Speaker 1: the hive. It's gonna have some some bead legs and
39:10
Speaker 1: pieces of winging and some yeast in there, some bacteria,
39:13
Speaker 1: some pollen, maybe some dust, some honey crystals. You know,
39:17
Speaker 1: you generally want to I'm sure they're purists that just
39:20
Speaker 1: love that stuff, but if you're selling it in a story,
39:22
Speaker 1: you probably want to remove um some of that or
39:26
Speaker 1: a lot of that, uh, to make it a food. Product. Uh.
39:30
Speaker 1: The other reason why is because if there's something floating
39:32
Speaker 1: in your honey, that just gives the honey a solid
39:36
Speaker 1: thing in there to crystallize around. And generally the honey
39:42
Speaker 1: buying public sees crystallization is like, uh, that I don't
39:46
Speaker 1: want to buy that honey. I saw that. That was
39:47
Speaker 1: mostly Americans that have an aversion to crystallized honey, and
39:52
Speaker 1: it's because we think that it's gone bad somehow. And again, yeah,
39:55
Speaker 1: all it is is like, yeah, there's been some crystallization
39:58
Speaker 1: of the sugars and all have to do is put
40:00
Speaker 1: in a nice tap water bath and it'll go back.
40:03
Speaker 1: But yes, you can just totally eat crystallized honey. There's
40:05
Speaker 1: no problem with it whatsoever. But because they know they're consumers,
40:10
Speaker 1: honey producers are like, we've got to get the solids
40:12
Speaker 1: out of there. Um. So basically, any honey you buy
40:16
Speaker 1: in the United States is going to have at least
40:20
Speaker 1: undergone macro filtering what the usc A called straining, and
40:24
Speaker 1: what that produces is raw honey. It's just they're getting
40:27
Speaker 1: out the biggest of the big solids. But then that's it.
40:30
Speaker 1: There's no more filtration whatsoever, and it's it's raw honey,
40:33
Speaker 1: which is a bit of a misnomer because every honey,
40:37
Speaker 1: uh type that isn't pasteurized, and pasteurized honey is just
40:41
Speaker 1: one small subset. Every other type of honey is technically
40:45
Speaker 1: raw honey. It's not been heated, there's nothing that's been
40:48
Speaker 1: killed off in it. It's all still raw. But I
40:50
Speaker 1: think what they're basically using the word raw for is
40:53
Speaker 1: like rustic honey. Right, yeah, I agree. You mentioned pasteurization.
40:58
Speaker 1: We might as well talk about that. Uh. I looked
41:01
Speaker 1: it up. I was like, why why would you past
41:03
Speaker 1: your eyes honey? Because you typically think of pasteurization for
41:06
Speaker 1: more of like a dairy product. Um, it's basically just
41:11
Speaker 1: there is no reason to do it that I found,
41:14
Speaker 1: other than making it look and like pour out of
41:17
Speaker 1: the bottle or jar or whatever, um more freely. Um,
41:22
Speaker 1: it's smoother apparently. Um, it's gonna alter the flavor obviously,
41:26
Speaker 1: because you're heating this honey up. But that's that's the
41:30
Speaker 1: only thing I found why you would pasteurized honey. Um.
41:33
Speaker 1: I saw that. You know, honey has all these anti microbial,
41:36
Speaker 1: anti viral properties. That doesn't mean there's no such thing
41:38
Speaker 1: as bacteria in honey or there's no such thing as mold.
41:42
Speaker 1: Spores in honey, and mold in particular can cause honey
41:45
Speaker 1: to ferment slightly. Again, nothing wrong with that, totally fine.
41:48
Speaker 1: You basically have a free little mini shot of mead
41:52
Speaker 1: right there in your in your honey. But people don't
41:54
Speaker 1: like that kind of thing, so I think pasteurizing it
41:56
Speaker 1: kills off any of those potential microbes, are yeast or
42:00
Speaker 1: old or anything. I'm at a hippie once in I
42:04
Speaker 1: think West Virginia that made his own meat. I think
42:09
Speaker 1: I might have told the story before, but he gave
42:10
Speaker 1: me some meat. Yes, somebody mailed us meat years and
42:13
Speaker 1: years and years ago. It's the only meat I've ever
42:15
Speaker 1: had in my life. I'm not a fan. It was
42:18
Speaker 1: it was fine. Yeah, It's not something I could drink
42:21
Speaker 1: regularly or anything like that. But yeah, if I were
42:23
Speaker 1: in West Virginia wearing nothing but a pair of overalls,
42:26
Speaker 1: I could probably drink a little meat. This is a
42:29
Speaker 1: nice guy, despite the fact that he was a fishman.
42:33
Speaker 1: I'm getting killed for knocking fish, by the way, Just
42:36
Speaker 1: keep it up though it doesn't matter. Well, you know
42:40
Speaker 1: what's funny is all the people that have written in
42:42
Speaker 1: are trying to talk me into liking fish right there, Like,
42:44
Speaker 1: surely you clearly haven't listened to fish and you don't
42:46
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. They do it. It's all
42:49
Speaker 1: almost verbatim. It's funny. It's almost like that talking points
42:52
Speaker 1: they shared. But I know fish fans wouldn't share talking points.
42:56
Speaker 1: It's not the fish way. Uh. Back to the filtering.
43:01
Speaker 1: We're jumping back to the other the U s d
43:05
Speaker 1: A designation which is filtered honey, and that is basically
43:08
Speaker 1: just more filtering. The filters are finer and it's gonna
43:12
Speaker 1: remove almost all those solids that you're gonna see. Uh.
43:16
Speaker 1: And it probably does require some heating because to get
43:18
Speaker 1: through those filters, you gotta have it a little more
43:20
Speaker 1: viscous or less viscous. Yeah, a little bit um. But
43:24
Speaker 1: if you're ultra filtering, not only do you have to
43:26
Speaker 1: warm it up, you combine it with a lot of
43:28
Speaker 1: water because you're pushing it through not not quite reverse
43:33
Speaker 1: Osmoses membranes, but something not too far off where it
43:37
Speaker 1: is getting everything out of the honey. So much so
43:40
Speaker 1: the U s d A says, this isn't honey. You
43:42
Speaker 1: can't call it honey honey. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, so
43:45
Speaker 1: there there's another way to basically achieve the same end
43:48
Speaker 1: without blasting it through a um ultra filtered membrane, and
43:53
Speaker 1: that's using diet tomaceous earth and dietms are fossilized microalgae
43:58
Speaker 1: with silica shells and this is the shells left over
44:01
Speaker 1: UM and they are super tiny, but they pick up
44:05
Speaker 1: even tinier particles. They are attracted to them. They get
44:08
Speaker 1: stuck in the shells, and then you filter out the diatoms,
44:12
Speaker 1: and then you've also filtered out the stuff even further,
44:15
Speaker 1: so you don't have to use quite as fine a
44:17
Speaker 1: filter because the diatoms have sucked up all the stuff
44:21
Speaker 1: that would have passed through that filter. That's catching the
44:24
Speaker 1: diet tooms. Does that make sense, Yeah, and it's pretty amazing.
44:27
Speaker 1: You might remember toomacious earth from our cockroach episode because
44:32
Speaker 1: that's the stuff that you can spread around that they
44:34
Speaker 1: eat that kills them from the inside out. It also
44:37
Speaker 1: drives fleas out too. If you have a fleat problem,
44:39
Speaker 1: you can spread diet tomacious earth on your carpet in
44:42
Speaker 1: it will help. Yeah, I've I've been through that. Uh.
44:45
Speaker 1: We talked about spun honey already and just want to
44:48
Speaker 1: reiterate that spun honey or creamed honey or whipped honey,
44:52
Speaker 1: it's all the same thing, and it's still doesn't lose
44:55
Speaker 1: any of those helpful properties. You can also rate honey
44:58
Speaker 1: by a color, of course, Um, you know, honey has
45:02
Speaker 1: a great range of color, and they you know, technically
45:05
Speaker 1: it's called optical density. But would they use the fund
45:10
Speaker 1: color scale? I think it's fund not really like Fister,
45:14
Speaker 1: the fabulous faucet with a funny name. Yeah, but I
45:17
Speaker 1: always say the Fister just because I think it's funny. Okay, well,
45:19
Speaker 1: then yes, this would definitely be fun And this is
45:22
Speaker 1: a scale from zero, which is water white all the
45:26
Speaker 1: way to one fourteen and above, which is dark amber.
45:29
Speaker 1: Very nice. Uh. And then what's the deal with organic honey?
45:32
Speaker 1: So organic honey is a different type of classification. Any
45:35
Speaker 1: of the stuff we've talked about, ultrafiltered, pasteurized, raw, microfiltered, creamed,
45:40
Speaker 1: all of that stuff could also be organic honey basically,
45:44
Speaker 1: as long as the organic techniques that the U s
45:47
Speaker 1: d A requires were used to um create the honey,
45:51
Speaker 1: and also on the plants that the bees are harvesting
45:56
Speaker 1: nectar from. That's right, So that's it. So from what
46:00
Speaker 1: I can tell based on all this information, grade a
46:03
Speaker 1: raw organic honey is probably top of the pops for anybody,
46:08
Speaker 1: top of the pops. And then when it comes to flavors, Uh,
46:12
Speaker 1: this is where we get into sort of the last
46:14
Speaker 1: piece we mentioned monofloral. The other end of the spectrum
46:18
Speaker 1: would be multifloral, and that is just simply what these
46:21
Speaker 1: bees are flowering on, or what they're what kind of
46:25
Speaker 1: flowers they're dancing with. If they're dancing with one flower
46:29
Speaker 1: and you know, it points out bees or bees, so
46:33
Speaker 1: it may be hard to make sure that's the only thing,
46:35
Speaker 1: but they're very usually they are. If it's labeled monofloral honey,
46:39
Speaker 1: that probably means that they have this farm has planted
46:43
Speaker 1: a very very large area of one thing, so it's
46:47
Speaker 1: really likely that the bee is eating almost all of that.
46:50
Speaker 1: Or you can like the wild flore honey, it's just multiflorals, like, hey,
46:53
Speaker 1: whatever is in the area, have at it. Uh. There
46:56
Speaker 1: can be different flavors, but it's not exactly like there
47:01
Speaker 1: are notes of things. It's not like if you eat
47:03
Speaker 1: orange blossom honey, it tastes like you scored to orange
47:06
Speaker 1: in it, but there will be like notes of citrus
47:08
Speaker 1: and things like that. I actually saw on a site
47:11
Speaker 1: um of different types of honey that they warn you
47:13
Speaker 1: that if your orange blossom honey smells like orange fragrance,
47:17
Speaker 1: then you've got some sort of fake honey that it's
47:20
Speaker 1: been counterfeit in some way. It's not like that, like
47:22
Speaker 1: you said, it's notes, but orange blossom honey is citrusy notes.
47:25
Speaker 1: Pumpkin blossom honey has pumpkinny notes. Um. I think sour
47:31
Speaker 1: wood is herbal and woodsy or no, that's um, what
47:36
Speaker 1: is that? Chuck Linden Linden Hunt herbal and woodsy. Eucalyptus
47:41
Speaker 1: honey has like a slight mental note to it. Um
47:44
Speaker 1: buckwheat honey. I don't think I've ever had it, but
47:47
Speaker 1: it's almost like black in color. It's definitely the dark
47:50
Speaker 1: amber side of the fun scale. Um. But it also
47:55
Speaker 1: has like kind of like a slight bitter note to
47:58
Speaker 1: it too. I want to try it. It sounds almost
48:00
Speaker 1: like tortuous, but I would still try. I'll try basically
48:03
Speaker 1: any honey at least once. Yeah, And they're all kinds
48:05
Speaker 1: of great honey um, sort of like flavored honeys and
48:08
Speaker 1: the honey is still in it, so it's still great
48:11
Speaker 1: for you and delicious, but like bourbon honeys and like
48:14
Speaker 1: uh sort of spicy chili pepper honey and stuff like that,
48:18
Speaker 1: all sorts of delicious things out there. One of our
48:20
Speaker 1: favorite things to do is go to the our local
48:24
Speaker 1: farm co op and get that local honey. And you know,
48:27
Speaker 1: it costs a little bit more, but like they're doing
48:29
Speaker 1: the right thing and not like Will Ferrell and Lebron James.
48:32
Speaker 1: Did you see that? Did they get into honey? They are.
48:36
Speaker 1: Actually it's a pretty cool thing. They partnered, along with
48:39
Speaker 1: some other celebrities with a company called Flamingo Estate, which
48:45
Speaker 1: is listed here as an urban farm and lifestyle brand. Okay,
48:49
Speaker 1: sells you know, all kinds of stuff, so urban straw hats,
48:54
Speaker 1: but they serve curated farm boxes. But what they've done is,
48:57
Speaker 1: I think they've gone to some of these celebrities who
48:59
Speaker 1: have large properties and said, hey, how do you like
49:03
Speaker 1: your own honey? We can make we can keep bees
49:05
Speaker 1: on your property and it will be called Will Ferrell
49:08
Speaker 1: honey and it will cost two hundred and fifty dollars
49:12
Speaker 1: a jar, but it goes to charity. Okay, I pulled
49:17
Speaker 1: it out at the end. There you know where they
49:19
Speaker 1: should go is the magnum's estate. He has big avocado
49:23
Speaker 1: um farms and apparently, yeah, and apparently avocado honey is
49:28
Speaker 1: a thing too. Okay um. Interesting, Before we end this chuck,
49:32
Speaker 1: if you'll indulge me, I just wanted to rattle off
49:35
Speaker 1: the properties that have been found among some of the
49:38
Speaker 1: compounds that you find in honey. If you indulge me,
49:41
Speaker 1: you're ready, m hm. That these compounds found in honey
49:45
Speaker 1: are shown to possess these properties antibacterial, anti viral, antifungal, antioxidant,
49:52
Speaker 1: anti inflammatory, anti neo plastic, anti microbial, anti carcinogen, anti rhythmic,
49:58
Speaker 1: anti leashman il, uh, anti thrombotic, anti mutesinogenic, mutagenic, anti
50:06
Speaker 1: no susceptive, anti microbacterial, anti proliferative, and immune boosting properties,
50:11
Speaker 1: not to mention that it's hypo cholester emic, cardioprotective, anti hypertensive,
50:17
Speaker 1: hypato protective, hypoglycemic, and UH neuroprotective, nephroprotective, gastro protective, so on,
50:26
Speaker 1: so forth, and it can improve sperm count and their
50:29
Speaker 1: motility and protects against vaginal and uterine atrophy. Plus it
50:34
Speaker 1: improves the normal estros cycle. Wow, and that amazing. Did
50:39
Speaker 1: you see anti Christ in there? I think so. It's miraculous.
50:45
Speaker 1: But in like the reverse manner, are you got anything else?
50:50
Speaker 1: I have nothing else. I don't either, and that means,
50:53
Speaker 1: of course everybody's time for listener mail. I'm gonna make
50:58
Speaker 1: this one very short because I just wanted to shout
51:02
Speaker 1: out that we got a I got an email from well,
51:08
Speaker 1: we got one from our old buddy Aaron Myzelle, who
51:12
Speaker 1: helps hut up the stuff you should know five K.
51:15
Speaker 1: I'm glad you. But Aaron, I think, was trying to
51:20
Speaker 1: locate this English professor that taught my Shakespeare class. I
51:24
Speaker 1: don't think she landed on it, but someone else did
51:27
Speaker 1: and said was it Dr Vance? And I was like, oh,
51:30
Speaker 1: it totally was. As soon as I heard the name,
51:32
Speaker 1: I remembered and uh, I believe Aaron though, or now
51:38
Speaker 1: I feel bad because I can't remember it was Aaron
51:40
Speaker 1: or the other person who wrote in UM was still
51:43
Speaker 1: in touch with Dr Vance got in touch with him
51:46
Speaker 1: and said, hey, Chuck took your classes. You may have
51:49
Speaker 1: even taken some classes from Vans who knows. Do you
51:52
Speaker 1: remember me? No? I didn't Okay, um, you know, I
51:56
Speaker 1: guess I was an English major, so I was always
51:58
Speaker 1: over there. But r vans Uh send in an email
52:02
Speaker 1: which I haven't responded to, but I'm gonna do that today.
52:05
Speaker 1: It said, Chuck can't tell you how honored I was
52:08
Speaker 1: by remarks on the podcast. I thank you so very much.
52:12
Speaker 1: Always well here, loving retirement, traveling grandchildren. And here's my
52:17
Speaker 1: website in case you want to see what I've been publishing.
52:20
Speaker 1: And I think everyone should go check it out. It's
52:22
Speaker 1: a mystery, thrillers, literary horror, humorous romance, historical fiction, all
52:27
Speaker 1: kinds of fun stuff and you can find all this
52:30
Speaker 1: at author John Vance dot com. Very nice. That was short,
52:34
Speaker 1: and Chuck appropriately sweet for this episode. Good stuff. That
52:38
Speaker 1: was nice. Man. I got a pat on your head
52:40
Speaker 1: from your old your old English teacher. He was the
52:43
Speaker 1: best man, had a you know, one of the few
52:45
Speaker 1: college professors who really impacted me, like Robin Williams. Yeah,
52:51
Speaker 1: don't get that joke. You don't know from um oh
52:56
Speaker 1: dead boats. Okay, thank you for saying that, because I
53:00
Speaker 1: was about to say, from oh captain, my captain. It's
53:03
Speaker 1: ultra working title. So if you want to be like
53:06
Speaker 1: Dr vance and let us know how retirements going for you.
53:09
Speaker 1: You can wrap it up in an email spanking on
53:11
Speaker 1: the bottom and send it off to stuff podcast at
53:14
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
53:19
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
53:23
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
53:26
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.