Raw milk and honey

#1

I have been thinking of getting some raw unpasteurised local wild honey to incorporate into my WOE. It so happens the local farm where I get my grassfed raw milk and free range eggs also sell their own wild raw honey. Now I know a lot of people think of honey as just pure sugar. But consider the honey you buy in a supermarket. It’s been heat-treated to the point of just being sugar, any benefits from eating it would be nil. It’s very different, I believe, when the honey is raw, untreated. It can even be used to heal wounds. It wards off colds, and strengthens the immune system. Dr. Ken Berry calls honey bee vomit, which always makes me laugh. It is both nutritional and beneficial, and I intend to mix a little every day into my glass of raw milk. I’ve been feeling great since drinking raw milk, no longer bloated, and I recently came down with what seemed the flue, but I recovered in just a few days. So I believe raw milk is beneficial, and that local wild honey, a small amount daily, is beneficial too. Do any of you drink raw milk and/or eat honey?

Apart from milk, butter, cheese and eggs, my WOE is animal meat based. And it’s a WOE that feels both luxurious and nutritional. I also desire to incorporate some organ meats, from a local grassfed butcher near my village, to make it even more so, as I have been concerned with potential deficiencies that perhaps eating organ meats may address.

#2

Big fan of both raw milk and raw honey, lots of benefits to both!

Ya, one of the many stupid things that come out of him.

#3

Hi lfod14, yes, me too I believe they’re beneficial. I do listen to Dr. Ken Berry sometimes, and Dr. Paul Mason, as well as read Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s blog and even watch/listen to Zoe Harcombe, it’s interesting, and I’m always interested in nutrition, also looking into Dr. Phinney. But I also believe in eating intuitively, and really listening to the body rather than leaning too much on science. I believe in healthy balanced eating and regular exercise, and if the energy isn’t there after months eating ketogenically, then tweaking is needed. My energy has improved much since giving up conventional, pasteurised dairy and replacing it with raw milk. Though I tolerate the KerryGold Irish butter well.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

What is the reasoning behind this? Raw honey, just like pasteurised honey, is mostly glucose and fructose. Personally, I don’t need either the carbs or the liver effects.

But that said, If you’re craving sugar in your diet, you don’t need our permission to eat it.

#5

I never understood why people buy that except if it’s from a proper source, even supermarkets keep good quality honey from beekeepers, at least here. We have zillion beekeepers. So we just go to the one in our village or the neighbour village :slight_smile: But even here, there is questionable honey in the supermarkets, I don’t know why that temps people… Oh well. People buy expensive water too, even in the rare villages with AWESOME tap water. Yeah, taste differ but still.

You know my body isn’t into pure sugars as I talked about it enough in your threads so honey is merely a joyful thing for me, I don’t consider it beneficial in my case. But it has good stuff in it I suppose, everyone says so ;). It just doesn’t matter due to the amounts I consume it in. I get my beneficial stuff from better food and that’s it for me.

Honey is the tastiest stuff used for sweetening though if you ask me. Even coconut sugar can’t compare with it and I love that too as I love caramel and it has a caramel-y taste.
But honey… It even LOOKS gorgeous! :slight_smile: And so very many flavors! My fav is fennel honey.

This won’t be informative as I merely read it in a book and I have no idea if it has some truth in it but I’ve read once that honey loses its benefits or most of it when mixed with water. Do anyone knows why? What can mere water change? Good stuff stays good stuff in mere water… But maybe there is something I don’t know.

Won’t be honeyed milk too sweet for you? With your enhanced sweetness perception?
And getting used to double sweet drinks (lactose from milk, fructose + glucose from honey) probably wouldn’t be good for most of us…
Okay, you surely put just a little bit into it but still. It may be not good. But I can’t say it surely will be bad for you, I just saying many of us would avoid sweet drinks regularly for a good reason.

How much honey do you plan to consume daily?

I don’t drink raw milk yet but I plan to. It’s just less convenient to buy it raw but it’s so much tastier and cheaper so hopefully it will happen soon.
I only eat honey in December and very rarely a bit later. This year was special as we met a beekeeper with a very tempting stand in a supermarket (outside of it but in the building with several stores, he surely made some good business there) in… Late January? I don’t remember. And fennel honey is just the best. We used up the small jar in months! (In the past it would have been a week but those times are over.) It’s a more expensive honey but if any sugar is worth it, it’s this stuff… One of the most amazing flavor I ever tasted - and it was exotic, my first fennel honey… So it was a supernova on my culinary sky. (I WANT to see a very visible but not dangerous for us supernova in my life. Very, very much. it’s so very unfair we didn’t get any Milky Way supernova since 1604. The LMC one was fortunate for the astronomers but not good enough for me, obviously. I want a nice naked eye one visible from here.)

#6

I’m not craving sugar at all, but I firmly believe in the health benefits of eating raw honey, as people must’ve done through centuries long before it was pasteurised. As it is, I am finding many things too sweet, like my raw milk, even my pastured eggs taste a bit sweet to me, but I believe it is all beneficial. I don’t crave fruits, or any other sweet food, I’m quite happy with my carnivorish ketowore WOE, eating pastured eggs, grassfed butter, raw milk, meat and fish. It’s a luxurious WOE. But yes, I do want to experiment with incorporating some wild raw local honey, and see if that benefits me too.

#7

A quarter of a teaspoon, to answer your question about the amount. I think I’ll eat it plain then, in the morning before my morning walk, and not mix it into anything. Yes you’re right, I already find the raw milk very sweet. I had some in my coffee earlier and that was rather nice, but I drink it on its own too, as not to lose any benefits.

#8

I would eat it alone myself, it is easier to enjoy it that way and maybe that amount is small enough to handle the sweetness. I personally eat it on a walnut/flax wafer as walnut and honey are the BEST together. And I love walnut, I eat it way more often than honey. Honey on a walnut wafer is not my usual off day… It’s wild! (And it’s probably more than 1/4 teaspoon but not by very much.)

I always hear about benefits of honey here, IDK how is it in other countries but honey is very popular here, I wrote about our very many beekeepers, my 3rd “neighbour” is a bunch of beehives too… The beekeeper only comes sometimes, he doesn’t live here.
So hearing about honey being awesome is something I can’t avoid.
But I have no idea what amount gives what kind of benefit.

Whenever I eat very tiny amount of something, I consider it not really beneficial, I may be very wrong, of course but I do that with sugary stuff I eat little of. Like fruits. Except lemon, that gives a big part of my Vitamin C intake, probably. At least in my more lemony times. But I hardly can imagine getting a decent amount from anything else, I cook the hell out of my meat, typically and I can’t change that.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

Well, then, have some honey, and let us know how it works for you. Given that lymphoedema is such a concern for you, I hope it helps reduce the symptoms.

#10

I do the same, that is, cook the hell out of my meat, not the beef, but the pork and chicken, as I just don’t want to risk undercooking it. I plan to get some grassfed organ meats from a local butcher, but I’ve no idea how to cook them, how to cook beef or chicken liver for example. I thought maybe I’d just fry them either in my iron pan or steel pan, with some butter, and make sure I don’t burn it. But I’m a novice when it comes to organ meats.

As to the honey amount, I think the small amount will still be beneficial, it’s pretty potent. But it’s kind of how a lot of people think, that if you have so very little of something it won’t be beneficial, so they eat a lot more of it to get the benefits. Like fruits. To get vitamin C needs met, and the need of other vitamins and minerals, we are told to eat the rainbow variety. But I believe a much smaller amount, so the fructose isn’t overwhelming, must be much more beneficial. The same with vegetables. Unfortunately there are many plant toxins to consider, and some tolerate them and some don’t. I’m happy with my Ketowore WOE, and enjoying the food. I think there’s no point staying on any WOE if you don’t enjoy the food, as there is also quality of life to be considered. I have always been fond of meat, in particular. But dairy is a wonderful source of good wholesome nutrition too, I don’t agree with Dr. Ken Berry or Dr. Paul Mason’s view there, and as for the Masai Dr. Paul likes to refer to as meat-eating thriving tribe, they consumed raw milk too. Raw milk must’ve been consumed since donkey’s years, and raw honey too.

#11

It is a combination of everything I do that helps reduce symptomps of my lymphedema and lipoedema. Such as eating ketogenically and remaining in ketosis which prevents water retention which in turn really helps the lymphatics function better, going for daily walks and using compression. Becoming fat-adapted. The raw honey might be good for healing my gut alongside the raw milk, and for strengthening my immune system, but I doubt the honey itself, or the raw milk itself, will help reduce the symptoms of lymphedema or lipoedema, and I’ve begun to think a ketogenic WOE is not a cure, but it is the best WOE for managing these conditions and keeping the lymphatics in good shape, as a HC/LF WOE invites water retention and that is a complication lipoedema ladies definitely don’t want.

#13

That sounds perfect, even for many non-organ meats :slight_smile: I don’t use butter as it burns easily, among other reasons but frying quickly (compared to my 2-3 hour roasts, at least), that’s great. Nowadays I prefer to fry my pork too, quicker, I find it nicer too… I use it for smaller amounts. If I have 3kg fatty meat, that goes to the oven (maybe I fry a little bit as it’s so lovely that way… I have my phases and always loved frying everything when I had vegetarian food, then came my roasts and now I am back to frying as my number one way to eat most meats except fowl and rabbit and I always fry liver).

I always ignored that as I didn’t understand the reason for it. And now I get what I need from my carni food, maybe I can use a tiny help here and there but I definitely don’t need more than one fruit for that. Lemon, the only fruit I allow in my diet any time. Not too much fructose but how potent flavor! I love sour and obviously have no problem with acidic things…

There totally is if one is super choosy with a bad taste (I mean, only liking bad food) and eating tasty food destroys their health.
But it’s way better to eat anything we fancy while eating only great healthy food. It’s my ultimate goal, actually. (Tiny extras here and there aren’t a problem, I can handle that.)
And indeed, eating only food we dislike probably won’t end well. But some people seem to hate healthy food, they still shouldn’t avoid it… And too many people consider their diet enjoyable only with a ton of sugar, not good.
I am with me regarding dairy, I consider them all good for me, of course not overdoing it, dairy isn’t my main food. And many people should avoid or minimize them, we know that but people are allergic to eggs too, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t eat several a day all my life as I am not them.

#14

Hi Shinita, I’m looking forward to get my organ meats, and will be frying them. I would love to eat rabbits, but a rabbit at the local butcher costs £10, that is just too much for a little rabbit that wouldn’t feed me for very long. I could get a lot of beef and pork for the same price. My SO and I still get our conventional muscle meats (beef burgers, pork chops, pork shoulder, chicken thighs) from the supermarked, but the organ meats I am looking to get will be grassfed and locally sourced. Tomorrow I walk to my favourite grassfed farm and get more eggs, raw milk and raw honey. I have also thought about incorporating fruits and berries like Dr. Paul Saladino does, but unlike him who’s happy to promote eating them year round, I only wish to eat them seasonally. That was how I grew up back in my own country, Norway, I ate berries in the summer, from my parents’ and grandparents’ lush gardens, but we also harvested them in the mountains. What a joy running around harvesting wild blueberries! And I always had them with milk. Then in the autumn, our apple, pear and plum trees we would enjoy. So, rather than buying fruits and berries from the supermarked (chemical and pesticide laden) my SO and I would go to local farms and pick them ourselves, summer and then autumn. That is the only way I see it beneficial to eat fruits and berries. Since I began drinking raw milk, the skin on my hands is looking so good, all smooth. Before I started with the raw milk it was bone dry, so my hands looked older. I thought it was the other carbs, almonds and vegetables that would be beneficial, but my body doesn’t do well with them. And now I understand why, having read up about the toxins in vegetables, and the much better bio-availability in fruit. I am still shaping my WOE. I am loving the raw milk. Another thing, since giving up conventional pasteurised dairy and replacing it with raw milk, my roseaca appears to be going away. That would be wonderful. I also have much more energy than I had when I was carnivore, so now I go for longer and better walks. And I can’t believe how much better my skin is looking, and this is no magic, I believe it’s a sign the raw milk has begun to heal my gut. I quit antibiotics which I were taking to see if the local grassfed raw milk, and absence of pasteurised grainfed dairy, would work on my roseaca. It appears to be working. How wonderful if I could be forever off those antibiotics. The walks I do are obviously also good for my lymphatics so it’s great I have more energy to get more active.

(Doug) #15

This! Especially in the context of this forum and people who are concerned with metabolic syndrome, obesity, and insulin resistance. Fructose, even more than glucose, has a metabolic pathway in humans that down-regulates energy in cells (it actually reduces the rate of ATP usage, and to my knowledge is unique in that respect), and shifts the focus toward storing fat. This harks back to when humans primarily only ate fruit toward the end of summer and into the fall, and gaining fat in preparation for winter was a positive thing for survival.

#16

I never did gain weight eating berries in the summer, fruits in the fall. So I think, although we like to use the example of the bear, this is highly individual. I now drink 1 and a half glass raw milk a day, and if anything I’m looking leaner because my issue with bloat is gone. My activity level is not high, I go for one nice walk a day. But food doesn’t affect me that way. I do understand the issue with insulin resistance and obesity and pre and diabetic, but there are also those who benefit from eating fruit and berries seasonally, and a little wild unpasteurised local honey. Yes, the stuff sold in the supermarket, you may as well eat high fructose corn sirup, or whatever it was called, or table sugar, but unpasteurised is different. It does have health benefits. We are all different. Our starting points coming into a ketogenic WOE differ, and our goals vary. It is highly individual, and one WOE does not fit all. Some do better on lowcarb, some on strict carnivore, some on clean keto, some on ketowore, there are many variations as we tailor the WOE to fit our needs. But I don’t see fructose, glucose or carbs in general as the enemy. I see the problem with it triggering binges for some people, but in small quantities, I don’t see it as something harmful. I used to harm my immune system unknowingly by eating processed foods like bread, pizza, hot crossbuns, teacakes, will I ever eat them again? No. I believe, when I gave up those foods, all the refined grains and carbohydrates, as well as the fruit and nut bars and dried fruits, I took a giant step towards my better health. I have been eating a ketogenic WOE since 12 October 2022, and it has taught me such a lot, to listen, really listen to my body. And to try and source the best information I can regarding nutrition, so I am constantly on the lookout, constantly learning.

#17

I just talked about my meats :slight_smile: We are very poor so it’s pork, chicken, turkey and rabbit (home-raised from the egg lady!) for us here. Sometimes deer but that’s special (and costs twice as much as the rabbit but still cheaper than the cheapest beef. and very good, I love deer). I would buy lamb sometimes but its availability is very bad, sadly. I adore Racka meat. That’s a beautiful sheep breed, popular here, I see them every day nowadays, one neighbour has a bunch of them and some goats too…
Rabbit has mild but nice flavor and it probably isn’t very substantial, I always eat my pork on the same day too. It wouldn’t be a big deal not to eat it but the egg lady raises rabbits and my SO can’t resist to bring 2 home a few times a year… :wink:

Farm organ meat is nice and very cheap, I buy some whenever I can (that was not often but it hopefully will change soon. I get my first order from the pig farm this week! but there is a beef farm too. meat isn’t available often and it runs out quickly so if I don’t grab the chance in 10-20 hours after the notice, it’s over and I may need to wait one or a few months).

I never even SAW a blueberry plant ever… Supermarkets have (not wild) blueberries sometimes but it’s insanely expensive. So I ate it once in my life. While people on forums talk about eating blueberries a lot… Oh well, I have zillion plants. I could even buy blueberry plants - but I would need their own soil too.
We have wild blackberries, blackthorns and rosehips here. Some raspberries too but that’s rare. It’s always fun to find wild fruit! :slight_smile: Except maybe the blackthorn, it’s not great even when it finally gets ripe after the frost comes. But skilled people make tasty jam from it. Once I have found wild pear, that wasn’t good either.
My family always had fruits and we never used chemicals… I totally wanted to have about all kinds possible and liked by me (this latter isn’t a big limit, I must say. I only said no to kiwi. I have yellow, red, purple and black raspberries, I am a fruit collector I think :wink: it actually bothers me I don’t have raspberries with pink flowers when they exists! or summer mini pear tree, I want one! I have 2 kinds of summer apples, that’s basic to me. and almonds die on me so I gave up)… So half of the year is fruit season for me now (it starts in June and ends in December but there are gaps), after December it’s only wild rosehip season as long as it’s cold enough. I do my best to eat as little fruit as possible, as I should. it’s still too much sometimes but maybe I will get a tad better. I don’t want to be too good, I need to enjoy my fruits. But I consider them lovely, natural candy. Too little to have benefits beyond mental health but mental health is very important :wink:

It’s great raw milk helps you :slight_smile: It must be very motivating to have all those health improvements people talk about on keto, I don’t have it as I was already pretty healthy on high-carb, I just feel better close to carnivore but it’s mostly mental (appetite, compulsive eating, just things regarding food but that’s quite much in my case). My brain seem to work the same on every woe I ever did too. Good thing I appreciate tiny things. My body did so much for me (well, for itself), it deserves the best I can give it comfortably!
I just wish for more energy one day… So much more important than losing fat, for me…

Fructose MAY be the enemy but you need to eat much for that. It seems you just want to eat a modest amount of berries and very tiny honey, that’s not the level where the body can’t handle fructose in general. As surely for some people zero fructose is the best but even people thriving on high-carb can’t just eat any amount of fruit and expect good things. My high-carber fruit-lover SO experienced that last year when he picked cherries… Hopefully this year he will be smarter. He eats fruit in moderation (kind of. still a lot if you ask me but IDK if it’s TOO much. one day I will look it up but it’s not like he will eat less and his body doesn’t complain) but being on the cherry tree proved too triggering. My body nudges me waaaaay earlier, it was a great idea to show it something better (it never nudged me when I ate a similar amount of fruit in the past). But we need different diets to begin with, apparently.

(Doug) #19

True - “a little honey” - I don’t picture people chowing down on big bowls of it. :smile:

I do question the notion of benefitting from fruits and berries. Is there an identifiable deficiency without them? Evolutionarily, we’re set up to only ‘need’ them to pack on fat, and that’s much less a factor with most modern diets.

I’m not saying that “It’s bad to eat fruits and berries” per se. We are indeed all different, and it comes down to one’s individual context. I think that almost everybody, before developing metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, diabetes, etc., could eat some fruits and berries without problems. Most kids are that way, at least for a while. And there are people who go their entire lives in some parts of the world on very high-cabohydrate diets, again without problems. They tend to only eat one big meal a day, and are not snacking or ‘grazing’ constantly. It gives their insulin level enough time to go down far enough that day-by-day the average level isnt harmfully high.

#20

Hi Doug. I agree with what you say about grazing. Because I recognize myself, or rather, my 6 months younger self in it, as this was what I used to do on my very unhealthy HC/LF WOE, I used to graze on what my mom referred to as bird food, snack plates, with dried fruit, especially dried mango, mixed nuts, dark chocolate, and this, along with my fruit and nut bars were what I preferred to eat, apart from bread, pizza and buns. Sure, I also cooked healthy homemade meals, but some days I fancied more my ‘birdfood’ snack plates and sandwiches. So my WOE was woefully lacking in what I see as nutritional foods. I almost never ate eggs back then. I didn’t eat butter. I ate my toast and bread slices plain, thank god, so was never in contact with the vegetable seed oils or margarine. And I was thin, but I was also physically ill, dealing with daily fatigue. My blood sugar would get low, and I would need to eat frequently to keep up my energy levels. On keto I can go for hours between meals, but then my meals are also super nutritious. It’s the difference of night and day, how I lived back then, and how I live now. It is closer to how I ate growing up in Norway, feasting on lots of meat, and good fish my father fished himself, sometimes I would join and fish too, but I never did have the patience for it, and enjoying fruits and berries seasonally from our mountain and gardens.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #21

Yes. The U.S. Fruit Growers Association executives have a deficient annual bonus, if we don’t eat their products.

(KM) #22

Ít might be important to determine how much honey the Maasai eat / how often. Just saying, either they’re grazing the random hive or raising small bee skeps; I doubt the average person on a natural h/g lifestyle has jars of honey or handfuls of honeycomb available to them on a regular basis. IIR a documentary I saw, honey was a big treat.