Rapeseed honey - useful properties and contraindications

Rapeseed is a great source for honey. This is a plant of high agricultural value, they sow large fields that are used concurrently in order to collect nectar. The rape honey resulting in it has high medicinal and nutritional characteristics. No wonder it’s still customary to call it “alive”.

Rapeseed crops belong to the family of cruciferous. The appearance of this plant is genuinely unknown, but it is known for certain that it is not wildly tall. Scientists believe that rape as an independent culture appeared more than four thousand years ago. It has extremely high productivity and is therefore widely distributed.

Rapeseed blooms for a month, from mid-May to the end of June. It has many inflorescences, consisting of four-petalled, bright yellow flowers. Its root system has a pivotal type of structure, and it is a good green man.

Its cultivation most often has a feed purpose. It contains essential oils in very large quantities and therefore canola is often used in the preparation of biodiesel. In the largest quantities, it has recently been grown precisely for this purpose. It goes without saying that the open spaces dotted with raw materials are a great place for bee apiary owners. For bees, rape has a very high productivity and allows you to get about 50 kilograms of honey from one hectare.

Composition and properties of rapeseed honey

The high nutritional characteristics of rapeseed honey distinguish this product from other bee production benefits.

1. Appearance and smell. The color is pale yellow, light. The smell is sweet, floral, slightly bitter.
2. Taste characteristics. Delicate taste with pronounced sweetness and some bitterness.
3. Structure. Candied honey becomes paler in color and has a fine-grained structure. A thick consistency significantly increases the time for pumping honey from honeycombs. Sometimes it is more than 24 hours. Experienced apiary owners prefer to pump out honey from a completely sealed honeycomb.
4. Features Natural rape honey is poorly diluted with water.

The composition of rapeseed honey deserves special attention. It contains moisture, up to 20%. Sugar - more than 80 percent: glucose, fructose, dextrin. It is the content of dextrins in this variety of honey that is the highest and is 7 percent more than in other varieties. The composition of rapeseed honey also includes many organic acids, minerals, vitamins, biologically active substances.

How to check the quality (naturalness) of rapeseed honey?

Honey, and especially rapeseed, is a valuable and healthy product for human health, lovingly created by Mother Nature. But in order to benefit from it, and not harm, it must be natural. Various falsifications of dishonest sellers are fraught not only with wasted money, but can often cause problems regarding the health of consumers.

Unfortunately, rape honey is not so popular, but fakes on it are quite common. To buy high-quality honey, you need to be careful about the choice of the seller, as well as carefully study the characteristics of the proposed product before even giving money for it.

1. Correct natural honey from rapeseed crystallizes quite quickly, so it is better to buy it in crystallized form.Often the buyer wants to get the freshest product possible. Unscrupulous sellers use this diligently and, in order to get honey of the desired consistency, dilute it and melt it. This leads to the fact that the product not only loses its useful properties, but also receives substances poisonous to health in the composition.
2. In the presence of extraneous impurities, honey from rapeseed gets a heterogeneous consistency and sediment. Beekeepers often feed the bees with antibiotics. If this was during the time when the striped toilers diligently collected honey, then they probably fall into the finished product.

It happens that the owners of the apiary practice feeding the bees with sugar. This increases the amount of honey obtained. Such honey is not of particular benefit to the consumer.

The benefits of rapeseed honey

The benefits of “live” honey are difficult to dispute. He is credited with simply unique and extraordinary healing characteristics. Why is it so useful?

1. Relieves manifestations of toxicosis in pregnant women.
2. Helps to restore the balance of hormones in the body.
3. It is externally used to treat wounds or ulcers. It has a hemostatic, disinfecting effect. Helps relieve inflammation and healing.
4. Increases the body's defenses and removes toxins.
5. Helps normalize liver function and secretion of liver enzymes.
6. Improves bone regeneration.
7. Contributes to the normalization of metabolism in the body.
8. It has a positive effect on diseases: atherosclerosis, anemia, obesity.
9. Positive effect on blood composition.

A positive effect on the balance of hormones, the ability to activate metabolic processes are those special features that give it a number of advantages compared to other types of honey.

Contraindications and Precautions

It is worth noting that rapeseed honey is useful only to those who do not suffer from individual intolerance to this product. Having previously allergic reactions to rape honey, you should not use it at all. And for those who once received unpleasant consequences due to the use of other varieties of honey for food, it is first necessary to determine whether the product will cause undesirable manifestations in the end.

In order to get benefits from high-quality honey, you need to use it correctly, having familiarized yourself with precautionary measures in advance:

1. Do not eat honey after heating to a temperature above 60 degrees. It can not only lose its beneficial properties, but also cause harm.
2. If once honey of another variety caused an allergic reaction, then its other varieties should be treated with caution.
3. Consuming honey can be harmful to dental health. Therefore, you need to drink it with water or just rinse your mouth after drinking.
4. It is not recommended to give honey to children until they reach the age of two.
5. With excessive use of honey in food, you can easily get extra pounds.
6. Honey stored for more than a year loses its valuable healing properties and is a simple treat.
7. It happens when poisonous pollen from certain plant species gets into honey collected by bees. Thus, it turns out “drunk” honey, the use of which can lead to a deterioration in well-being.
8. For allergy sufferers who in the past have an individual reaction to plant pollen (hay fever), eating honey is not recommended.
9. People with diabetes and overweight should be careful about honey.

When honey is mixed with liquid, milk, tea or water, their temperature should not exceed 60 degrees. The maximum allowable rate of honey per day is approximately 120 g. To get the maximum benefit from the product, it is better to eat on an empty stomach.

Traditional medicine recipes

Most often, honey is used to treat colds.Moreover, it is used not only in its own form, but also as part of recipes intended for treatment.

1. From a cold. Very popular formulations based on honey and aloe. To prepare such a medicine, you need to take aloe juice and honey in a ratio of 1: 5 (5 parts juice, 1 part honey), combine in one container. Drink a teaspoon 3-5 times a day until recovery. Keep refrigerated.
2. With kidney disease. For 2 parts of honey, you need to take 3 parts of black radish, chopped on a grater. To mix. Use a teaspoon before bedtime and 30 minutes before meals.
3. With cardiovascular disease. Take 100 g of honey, juice of half a lemon, 50 g of raisins and 50 g of dried apricots. Rinse dried apricots and raisins well and chop. Mix all the ingredients. Take a tablespoon 2-5 times a day for a month.
4. With lung diseases. Take half a glass of honey, fresh pork fat 100 g, butter 100 g, a tablespoon of cocoa, a tablespoon of aloe. In cooled melted lard and butter, add cocoa, honey and juice. Stir thoroughly until smooth. Store in a refrigerator in a jar with a tightly closed lid. Apply 2 times a day. In warm, up to 60 degrees milk, add a tablespoon of medicine and drink instead of tea until recovery.
5. With a stomach ulcer and duodenal ulcer. Mix 20 g of honey with a glass of white cabbage juice. Cook immediately before use. Drink in the morning, after waking up, before the first meal.

How to store honey?

Rapeseed honey should be stored in a dry, dark and cool room, but not in the refrigerator. The container can be made of glass, ceramic or clay. So that honey does not turn sour, does not absorb extraneous aromas, it must be stored with a tightly closed lid for storage.

Rapeseed honey is widespread and available in European countries. In Canada, about 50% of all beekeepers in the country are engaged in rapeseed honey production. In the countries of the former Soviet Union, this variety is not very popular. Therefore, if it comes across for sale somewhere, it is necessarily high-quality, it is simply necessary to try it in order to evaluate its useful properties.

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