Cooking with honey. Is it not so funny?
So i was about to bake some cookies using honey as a sweetener rather than sugar and a friend who is an Ayurveda practitioner said honey should never be heated or warmed and that any form or applying heat to honey makes it toxic. I certainly didn't want to scoff at her as I've cooked with honey before.... have i been "living on the edge"?
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People little and big have been drinking this for Centuries, it is suppose to be better the Sugar!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxymethylfurfural#Occurrence_in_food
Anytime I hear anything 'scary' like this, I always pose the question... how long have humans been doing / eating it? If you think about it that way, you're likely to get the right answer!
“The idea is that heat destroys enzymes. And basically any time you are going to heat honey the enzymes are going to get destroyed and as a result dilute a lot of the medicinal value of the honey. Raw and unfiltered honey has incredible antibacterial and antifungal properties. It’s very, very healing in many ways.”
That said, there’s no evidence that heat-treated honey is actually toxic
the heating of honey changes the molecular structure of the honey and makes it highly toxic. it should be made compulsory by all the legislations in the world to mark on the bottles that honey should not be heated. also, it is a shame that too many companies these days are marketing their cereals with honey, whose preparation involves heating the cereals to cook them. the right procedure is only to cook the cerals, then make them luke warm and thereafter only add honey. these companies who are marketing so many sorts of “processed foods” as “healthy choices for people” should be banned by people, as no government around the world have hands big enough to ban these big and powerful brands. this has been scientifically proven that when honey is heated, it forms a chemical called as hydroxymethyl furfuraldehyde (HMF) and also chemically alters its basic structure/ composition while increasing peroxides.
I found this article a little helpful which says something your friend suggests but still has a scope of heating honey.
http://sites.google.com/site/spiritualfoodcsa/food-a-pedia/raw-honey
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