5 Simple Ways To Add Honey To Your Diet

These 5 simple ways to add honey to your diet will help you get more of this wonder food into your daily routine. 

If you come from India, you have been told about the unlimited benefits of honey – it’s a default setting, believe me!. Be it a remedy for good skin, good digestion, good immunity or just a remedy for cough and cold- honey is used day in and day out.

But for modern day people who have such ‘fast and furious’ lifestyles, honey is just another fashionable product that is kept in the pantry but is hardly used.

Honey has endless health benefits, but still, it is one of the most under-used products in our kitchens and it does not form a big part in our routine diets (which it should, knowing the benefits it has).

Here are 5 simple ways to add honey to your diet every single day.

Honey Lemonade

You must’ve heard about warm lemon water and honey first thing in the morning and how it is super healthy. Well, it helps in cleansing the stomach as the mixture contains fibre and pectin. Also as it has sugar (by way of honey) it helps you feel full and keeps cravings at bay, thus increasing your chances of losing weight.

If you don’t prefer having it first thing in the morning, you can try enjoying it as a healthy drink during the day.

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For making honey lemonade,  take a tall glass full of water (warm/normal/cold- depends on your taste), add the juice of half a lemon and a teaspoon full of honey and enjoy the refreshing taste!

Honey Tea

Instead of adding sugar to your daily tea, try adding a dash of honey (it will work especially for your black tea, green tea or other flavoured teas). Honey is made up of glucose, fructose and other minerals like calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium etc; so it is far more nutritious and flavourful than simple table sugar.

Dressings and Marinades

Honey works wonderfully as a salad dressing, and also as a marinade for various meats and fish; a lot of Asian recipes include honey as a base of in their marinades.

a. Salad dressing idea – Add a teaspoon of mustard, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, some lemon juice and a teaspoon of honey with some salt and pepper, mix it and pour over your salad leaves. (Works really well with a mix of baby spinach, cucumber, avocado and tomatoes).

b. Marinade idea for grilled fish – Mix a teaspoon of honey, teaspoon of fish sauce, teaspoon of dark soy sauce, some lemon juice; add in one chopped green onion, some minced garlic and ginger and salt and pepper. Marinate any white fish (I prefer cod or catfish) for 10 minutes and then grill it.

Honey for Desserts

You can replace sugar with honey very easily in custards, cookies and cakes. Also, you can use it as a topping for your snacks like, fruit salad with honey, pancakes with honey, honey sandwiches, bacon and honey; add a spoonful of honey to your favourite bowl of cereal or oatmeal, it just zests everything up.

Honey and Milk

Make it a bed time ritual if you want too, because there’s nothing that relaxes you more than a glass of warm (not hot) milk and a teaspoon of honey, before going to bed. It is scientifically proven as well that honey is one of the rare sugar forms that cause a controlled increase in the amount of insulin being added to the system, which promotes the generation of sleep aiding chemicals from the brain and soothes you down.

To add to all this, honey makes wonderful face packs and hair masks and can help you get some glowing skin and fight the problem of hair loss. Also, for the kids of this generation who get sick all the time, if honey becomes a part of their regular diet (in some way), over a longer time it can help built good immunity and a good digestive system for them.

So, try these ideas out- I am already inculcating the ‘Honey habit’ in my family!

Originally published at author’s blog.

Pic credit: Dino (Used under a CC license)

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