OH! I love Honey!

I love Honey and I love Wholesome Sweeteners raw organic honey. There is nothing better than  a warm slice of  banana nut bread with raw honey (and extra butter from grass fed cows!) for breakfast.

I love honey almost as much as I love butter!

Now back to the Honey…

Wholesome Sweeteners offers many different organic, fair trade sweeteners including sugars, raw and amber honey and stevia products.

Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Raw Honey

Blended from multi-floral nectar collected on Fair Trade Certified cooperatives in Quintana Roo and Chiapas, Mexico, this luscious honey is processed below 110°F to maintain the nectar’s natural properties. Perfect in beverages, baked goods, fresh fruit, jams and spreads.

Fair Trade Certified Organic Honey ensures that a fair price is paid directly to the farmers and beekeepers tending the hives; it means they can develop the quality of the hives and forage areas and build thriving communities. By protecting the hives and forage areas, Fair Trade Certified encourages biodiversity and helps the forests thrive, too.

Raw Honey vs. The Regular Stuff

Natural raw honey is a living food, like veggies and fruits. It’s full of enzymes and phytonutrients that help digestion and can help to heal the gut, it also has antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal properties as well. Pasturization (sterilization through heating) kills the majority of these enzymes and that’s what you get with commercially produced honey, the sweetness remains, but many of the nutritional benefits have been destroyed. Raw honey has not been heat treated, and is bottled as harvested so that all its nutritional benefits are intact.

Raw honey can be used as a sweetener instead of using processed sugars in many recipes. What is less well known is that raw organic honey has been used for healing skin problems such as eczema sores, burns, cuts, scrapes and localized infections for thousands of years. It can help with digestive problems such as ulcers and colitis, and is also good for colds, coughs and sore throats.  As soon as one of my kids has a cough or sore throat, they always ask for some “honey medicine”!

Raw honey is not the same as organic honey. Honey can be either raw, organic, both, or neither!

Commercial honey producers and beekeepers may use synthetic drugs and antibiotics to prevent bee disease, or calcium cyanide to kill the bees to harvest the honey, or carbolic acid as part of the extraction process. Flowers from which the bees collect nectar may have been sprayed with pesticides. Conventional honey that is not certified organic may have been produced using some or all of these practices. To ensure the honey you consume is free from all of these, choose honey that is certified organic by one of the approved certification bodies.

So you have found your jar of certified organic honey. It may or may not be raw honey – that depends on whether it has been pasteurized or heat treated. Raw organic honey can be purchased from some health food shops, or reputable local beekeepers, Central Market and Whole Foods both carry it in Houston.

I’m not alone in thinking raw organic honey is one of the treasures of our world. It’s taste, its nutritional benefits, and its healing properties make it special. It’s a wonderful thing to keep in your kitchen both for eating and healing.

We go through a lot of honey around here, so I am thrilled to be writing about Wholesome Sweeteners Raw Honey today! Since we starting eating more wholesome foods, and less junk, I have had to tweak many recipes. Most of the time no one notices. My husband hates coconut, for example, but has no idea that the only oil I use in this house is coconut oil! Some recipes are easier to work with when trying to sub healthier oils, sweeteners, and grains.

My favorite Banana Nut Bread!

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*I was not financially compensated for this post. I received a sample for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.*

Brenda Farris