Honey is very beneficial to us, especially when it is organic honey, un-filtered and raw. It is commonly used to heal burns and ease throat colds because it has many healing properties and can be used in many recipes and to sweeten foods and beverages. In addition to its antimicrobial qualities, it also can prevent scarring, and speed up the healing of tissue for diabetics wounds or sores. Diabetes typically worsens ulcers by making it more difficult for the body to heal and replace infected or dead tissue with healthy skin.
When it is natural, it is pure and comes directly from nature. Organic honey is free of preservatives, additives, and artificial colors or flavors and it is good for your body. Honey cannot be labeled certified organic if it has traces of chemicals, drugs or antibiotics and it must be produced, processed, and packaged in accordance with national or federal regulations. It also needs to be certified organic by the governing body or an independent organic farming certification organization.
Organic honey comes from honeybees that wander around for nectar in their environmentally clean colonies that do not have contaminants. Their environments extend to about 2 mile radius with their colony as the epicenter. This means that honeybees could easily pick up contaminants, such as chemicals, drugs and antibiotics in their environment around their colonies.
Some of the chemicals used are sulfa compounds and antibiotics to control honeybee diseases, carbolic acid to remove honey from the hive. In some instances, even calcium cyanide is used by beekeepers to kill the bee colonies before extracting the honey. Also conventional honeybees gather nectar from their environment which is often sprayed with pesticides.
Therefore, to produce truly organic honey first the honeybees need to be in an environment free of additives and chemicals. Second its processing must be kept to a minimum and no additives should be used. Also filtering should be avoided as it reduces its natural healing properties, color, and taste.
The most pure form is the unfiltered raw honey because filtering and processing includes adding other syrups and flavors and chemicals to modify its properties. Also, some of the beneficial properties that are lost during filtering and processing include its healing properties and ability to help heal the wounds of diabetics. Even though it is put through ultra-filtration processes to remove chemicals, the end results is honey that no longer has its healing properties because it has been heavily diluted with water, boiled and filtered until it returns to a more natural consistency.
One of the advantages of authentic organic honey and natural sweeteners made with organic honey is that organic honeybee growers need to sustain the natural life cycle of bees by safeguarding their natural environment. Also, certifying the hive as organic is expensive so most beekeepers do not exterminate the bees at the end of the season, which is often a very common practice among conventional beekeepers.
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