The predigestive power of raw honey

Good health is all about good digestion. In India there's a saying, "with strong digestion, one can withstand poison. With poor digestion, even nectar is poison". This is so very true and wise, and something every naturopath must remember when we treat. To heal the body, restore digestion.

There are loads of ways to improve your digestive strength, there's lemon juice, cider vinegar, probiotics, bitter herbs, raw foods, lacto-fermentation... The list goes on! But while reading my copy of 'Nourishing Traditions' today, I found a great little nugget of info I want to share. Raw honey. A favourite sweetener of mine for baking. But what I hadn't realised is that it's so high in amylase, the digestive enzyme for carbohydrate, that it will begin the digestive process in just 15 minutes of contact!! So this means if you spread raw honey on bread and leave it on the bench while you shower, the honey will begin to break down the carbohydrate in the grains, doing some of the digestive work for you.

You can also use raw honey when you pre-soak your organic rolled oats for breakfast. You can use it in biscuits or cake batter, and let it stand before baking. Whenever or however you use it, remember the 15 minute rule.

For those who haven't used raw honey before, don't go looking for it in the supermarket, it's in the health shop. Unfortunately the stuff in the supermarket is processed, not raw. Processing the honey at high temperature kills the enzymes and also the vitamins present in the raw honey. This renders the processed product plain old sugar. No natural buffers. To quote Marco Pierre White on masterchef this week, "The more you do to food, the more you take away from it".