Fresh concerns over use of adulterated honey
IT is the latest craze in town. It is much sought after, and the market is booming from Port Harcourt to Sokoto. Probably to meet demands and make more profits, most Nigerian markets are now flooded with adulterated/fake honey. CHUKWUMA MUANYA reports that the proliferation of adulterated honey could be fuelling the diabetes burden.
CHUKWUKA Ndudi is 44 years old. He loves honey. Ndudi uses honey to sweeten his meals as a replacement for table sugar. Ndudi's father died of diabetes and he was advised that taking honey instead of sugar would ensure that he beats not just diabetes, but colds, cough, skin inflammation, burn wounds, skin ulcers, and immune deficiency.
Unfortunately, Ndudi developed diabetes, and his doctor asked him to stop using honey. Diabetes is a deficiency of the pancreas, whereby insulin is not produced sufficiently or utilised properly. It is basically a disorder of metabolism, primarily that of carbohydrates. The ingested sugars and starches cannot be deployed, and hence are eliminated in the urine. Symptoms of diabetes include frequent urination, extreme thirst or hunger, weight loss, fatigue, numbness, and infections.
There are two types of diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce any insulin. People with Type 2 diabetes either do not produce enough insulin or their cells resist the insulin. They tend to be overweight, because the high insulin levels, unable to channel glucose into muscle cells, convert glucose into fat and cholesterol instead. This results not only in obesity, but also very often heart disease, poor blood circulation in the legs and eye diseases.
Type 1 diabetes is treated with insulin injections, which help glucose get into the body cells and maintain blood glucose control, while Type 2 diabetics commonly use glucose-lowering drugs. Most diabetics are Type 2, and they usually develop it in their 40s.
Ndudi developed Type 2 diabetes. Does honey cause diabetes? Experts said pure honey would not when taken in moderation, but adulterated ones would.
Until now, excess consumption of artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sugar have been linked to a number of medical problems including obesity, high blood pressure, high triglycerides and inflammation, which can lead to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
This strong link has made medical experts to recommend alternative and healthy options like honey and thaumatin (from the rhizome of Moi Moi leaf plant, Thaumatococcus danielli).
However, the faking and adulteration of honey by unscrupulous Nigerians by boiling crude sugar, sugar cane and starch, and selling them to unsuspecting buyers as 'original' has not helped matters.
Adulterated honey also implies that the commodity has been added glucose, dextrose, molasses, corn syrup, sugar syrup, invert sugar, flour, starch, or any other similar product, other than the floral nectar gathered, processed, and stored in the comb by honey bees.
Critics said this might be contributing to the epidemic of diabetes and food poisoning in the country. They urged caution and moderation in the use of honey. They warned that most of the honey sold in Nigerian markets are adulterated and could do more harm than good.
Nigerian researchers have evaluated the extent of adulteration of honey samples from various geographical locations. The study tilted "Physico-Chemical Studies on Adulteration of Honey in Nigeria" was published in Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences by R.A. Lawal, A.K. Lawal and J.B. Adekalu.
The results indicate that honey samples from Akwa-Ibom, Ondo and Ogun were completely free of adulteration. However, honey samples obtained from Shaki, Yola and Ibadan were discovered to have undergone some form of adulteration.
Honey is found in beehives in large quantities in Nigeria. According to the National Honey Board, honey contains mainly sugars. It also contains various vitamins, minerals and amino acids as well as glucose and fructose and is popular as a natural food. There is a wide variety of honey - Manuka honey, Pasture honey, Jelly bush honey and Jungle honey; and the varieties are due to components of the flower sources.
Honey is used not only as natural food but also as traditional medicine for health care, in beauty products and anti-inflammatory skin care. One variety, Jungle Honey (JH), is collected from timber and blossom by wild honeybees that live in the tropical forest of Nigeria. JH is used as traditional medicine or preventive medicine to treat colds, skin inflammation and burn wounds as well as for general health care.
According to a study published in eCAM Advance Access, JH was found to boost immune functions and antitumor activity in mice.
A Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Optimal Specialist Hospital Surulere Lagos, Dr. Ugochukwu Chukwunenye said: "Honey is a complex sugar. It requires some enzymes and time to be digested after it is consumed unlike glucose or fructose. So, while it takes time for honey to be digested and absorbed, glucose is rapidly absorbed into the blood. Diabetes is a condition whereby the body is unable to produce enough insulin hormone to aid good absorption and utilisation of sugar and other carbohydrates.
"A meal of honey therefore presents less challenge to the diabetic than a similar quantity of glucose. It is however not true that a diabetic can take honey as he likes because it is eventually converted to glucose in the body."
Head, Prosthodentics Department and Director, Dental Care for Physicians Programme at Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), Parkistan, Prof. Dr Muhammad Amin, said: "Pure honey, especially from the wild, is a blessing for ailing diabetics and can be used without any harm as it has multifactor anti-bacterial, haemostatic and nutritious properties.
"It was just a misconception and old wives' tale that such patients should avoid using pure and natural honey. In fact, pure honey is used to maintain oral hygiene and various inflammatory problems of the teeth and gums such as gingivitis periodontitis, plaque and caries. In many cases it yields far better results than some antibiotics.
"In my clinical practice, the use of pure honey for ulcerative conditions of the buccal (mouth cavity) membranes, tongue and gums has yielded extraordinary results especially when other case-related medicines have failed to heal the wound."
Researchers have studied the relative tolerance to honey and glucose in people with impaired glucose tolerance or mild diabetes.
The researchers in an article published in Journal of Medicinal Food titled, 'Subjects with Impaired Glucose Tolerance Exhibit a High Degree of Tolerance to Honey' concluded that from the investigation that honey may prove to be a valuable sugar substitute for subjects with impaired glucose tolerance or mild diabetes.
A homeopath at the Nigeria College of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) Abuja, Prof. Osmond Ifeanyi Onyeka, said clinical studies have shown that pure honey is a healthier choice in diabetic diet than table sugar and other non-nutritive sweeteners such as saccharin, aspartame.
The homeopath said with appropriate control, many diabetics are still able to safely enjoy natural honey. "However, each diabetic is different and has to learn how his or her body reacts to different foods. Their doctor should first be consulted before incorporating honey into their meal planning," he said.
Meanwhile, the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) have decried the proliferation of fake honey in markets.
RMRDC has said that adulteration is a huge challenge to the development of honey business and led to poor quality of the products in the market.
It has been shown that adulteration and faking of honey products is not peculiar to Nigeria. Adulteration of honey has also been widely reported in Israel and the United States.
A laboratory technologist at the pharmacognocy department, College of Medicine University of Lagos (CMUL), Mr. Isaac Adeleke, told The Guardian: "Personally, when selecting honey in the shop, I think it is almost impossible to tell the bad from the good by just looking at the honey content through the bottle or studying its food and nutrition labels. Also, prices are not always a good indication of quality honey.
"Some say that ants do not fancy pure honey and will not hover around it. I do not quite understand or believe this, there is no reason why ants would favour processed sugar over honey. The reason why a sweet liquid is more attractive than another for the ants could also be due to the liquid density and we know that honey viscosity varies depending on its floral type.
"Another test that is commonly discussed is the flame test which involves lighting up a cotton bud dipped into the honey with a match-stick flame. It is believed that the honey will burn if it is pure. I have tried this method many times using different types of honey, some of which I was very sure they are pure honey (example honeycomb honey), but the result I got was never consistent, and it seemed to depend very much on how much honey was dipped and how long the honey was exposed to the flame.
"There is another simple way which I have tried to verify the purity of honey. Observe how liquid honey comes down into a glass of water. Pure honey does not immediately dissolve in water; you will notice that it takes a bit of effort to stir it in the water to dissolve the lumpy bits, whereas sugar tends to dissolve easily in a jiggery as you drop them into the water. However, this test result is sometimes not that clear because different honey varieties have different viscosity, some are denser and thicker than others, and obviously honey in cream form, even if it is adulterated with other substance, will not dissolve as easy as liquid honey in water."
However, Scientists have developed a test to identify adulterated or impure honey. Researchers in France are reporting development of a simple test for distinguishing 100 per cent natural honeys from adulterated or impure versions.
Their study appeared in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Bernard Herbreteau and colleagues described a new, highly sensitive test that uses a special type of chromatography to separate and identify complex sugars (polysaccharides) on their characteristic chemical fingerprints. They showed that the new technique accurately distinguished the impure honeys from the pure versions based on differences in their sugar content.
