Burning stomach from raw honey

[Caveman]

To all of you who eat raw honey, does your stomach ever burn from after consuming a good amount on an empty stomach?

I used to eat raw honey in the morning on an empty stomach and then only ate it when I had something else in my stomach or was eating meat at the time.

I felt like eating it in the morning again and sure enough, my stomach "burns" pretty intensely after 20 to 30 minutes of eating a few tablespoons on an empty stomach.

I'm still wondering what the hell this is..

The last time I had such a feeling was when I made an attempt at a parasite cleanse with a wormwood, black walnut.. etc..

[TylerDurden]

No, never had that. But I have frequently had a weird, nasty, burning sensation in my mouth if I consumed too much raw honeycomb at one time. I also experienced the burning sensation in my mouth, plus some blood-sugar-related issues whenever I consumed even a tiny bit of raw, liquid honey from jars, which makes me suspect that all so-called "raw", liquid honey in jars in the UK is not really raw at all.

[stoneforest]

I have felt the same sensation in the mouth and stomach. If it doesn't feel right IMO I would stop it. Maybe the honey helped u in the past but just no longer agrees with u. Symptoms indicate gastritis or ulcer. Maybe some alkaline foods like greens or avocado may help. Good luck

[OrganicBuns]

I've just started to learn about all the wonderful benefits of raw honey! My significant other has really taken to it as well, he likes to eat a a tablespoon of it on its own when he's craving something sweet. He has also reported a slight burning sensation. He finds that it is his tongue and back of throat in particular, however, he does not describe it as uncomfortable, just that it's there. Otherwise he thinks it's making him feel great.

We think it may be the honey acting as a antiseptic, especially since we suspect he has a bacteria problem from years of bread eating and a white-ish colouring on his tongue. He's only just started with the honey, so we'll see how it goes.

Thoughts?

[Hannibal]

After eating some kinds of raw honey I feel very thirsty and need to drink water.
But I haven't experienced any burning.

[raw-al]

Your issue does not surprise me.

According to Ayurveda honey can aggravate depending on your body type. If it is heated, it is bad news all around. It becomes toxic and will give skin issues.

Another thing that enters into the equation is the type of flora that the bees fed on to make it.

We bought some spring honey locally and it was very sour and uneatable. The later in the season stuff from the same aviary is very mild.

We eat it with raw butter and it is great. About four parts butter to one part honey. Any stronger and it is too sweet and strong.

Prior to discovering raw honey I could not eat it at all.

Ayurveda says that eating equal parts honey and butter is not a good idea, however either side of that equation can be very good.

Honey is considered a carrier (anupan) of nutrients to the brain.

[Wolf]

I've never really had burning in the stomach after eating raw honey, as for burning in the mouth though, I wouldn't really describe it as burning, but sometimes I feel a bit of something which I thought was just an overpowering of sweetness.. Maybe your stomach just doesn't like so much sugar when it's empty?  I know before I started eating raw at all, if I was really hungry I didn't like eating sweet things, not even fruits, and they didn't make my stomach feel good to eat sweet things when it was empty.  Whenever I was hungry I wanted something with meat in it.  Now though, I eat fruit all the time, especially on an empty stomach, and I do fine now, so I don't know.

Or, maybe your raw honey wasn't really raw?  I know I bought a thing of honey once that was labeled "wild raw honey" but it was liquidy amber, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't raw at all.  There are sometimes things labeled as "raw" when they don't mean unheated, more like "pure" or "straight" or something like that.. Like, I once told my friend I ate raw cheese, and they asked me, "you ate it straight?" and I had to tell them I meant it was unpasteurized.. One thing I think we should try fighting for with food labels is that nothing can be labeled as "raw" if it's been heated over a certain degrees, that would be nice.

[Techydude]

Honey is acidic due to the bacteria in it which ferment and cause acidity so yeah acid = upset tummy. Raw honey makes my tummy upset.

[turkish]

if it burns then stay away from it.

i recently had ulcers, and according to ayurveda i should avoid it.

[Coatue]

if it burns then stay away from it.

i recently had ulcers, and according to ayurveda i should avoid it.

When first trying raw paleo, I made the mistake of eating raw meat and cooked meat within 20 minutes of each other. It gave me a bad case of gastritis where the whole lining of my stomach burned for days. Raw manuka honey completely stopped the burning sensation and healed my stomach lining fast.

[Ioanna]

so then is raw manuka honey really raw??  i just assumed it wasn't bcz it's imported.

[Wolf]

I found some Manuka honey, it only says "raw" in the ingredients list as "Ingredients: 100% Raw Honey" but it doesn't otherwise say raw or unheated on it.  But I figure it must be raw, since it is solid and opaque rather than liquidy and transparent.  and it says Bio Active 5+ on it.  Actually I'm looking at it now and it says "100% Raw" in the bottom right corner on the front, too.  But I'm pretty sure it hasn't been heat treated.  it also has a rather unique taste, it's pretty good.

[PaleoPhil]

I like raw honey and I eat it, using it to make avocados tasty, but if I eat too much I get acid reflux burning in my lower esophagus and sometimes my stomach. There's a simple possible explanation for burning stomach or esophagus from honey--it's one of the most acidic foods there is:

"Honey is very acidic. Its pH is between 3 and 4 - about the same as orange juice or a can of coke. Bacteria are killed in acidic environments like this." http://www.biotechlearn.org.nz/focus_stories/honey_to_heal/how_honey_heals_wounds

I even got canquer sores yesterday after eating two acidic foods on the same day--raw honey and lemon juice.

Please note: don't confuse acidic foods with acidifying foods. Acidic foods are foods that are acidic when they enter your mouth. Acidifying foods are foods that have an acidifying effect on your bodily fluids (like grains, cheeses, meats, etc.).

[Ioanna]

I found some Manuka honey, it only says "raw" in the ingredients list as "Ingredients: 100% Raw Honey" but it doesn't otherwise say raw or unheated on it.  But I figure it must be raw, since it is solid and opaque rather than liquidy and transparent.  and it says Bio Active 5+ on it.  Actually I'm looking at it now and it says "100% Raw" in the bottom right corner on the front, too.  But I'm pretty sure it hasn't been heat treated.  it also has a rather unique taste, it's pretty good.

hmmm.. that's not very convincing, though.  unfortunately there is not any regulation of the term 'raw' on food items, and has nothing to do with the application of heat.  e.g. almonds.  the best judge of honey being really raw is if it says not heat treated, not strained, is opaque, and the price.

but, even if this honey is raw in nz, i would expect usa would not allow that to be imported/distributed raw.

[Wolf]

hmmm.. that's not very convincing, though.  unfortunately there is not any regulation of the term 'raw' on food items, and has nothing to do with the application of heat.  e.g. almonds.  the best judge of honey being really raw is if it says not heat treated, not strained, is opaque, and the price.

but, even if this honey is raw in nz, i would expect usa would not allow that to be imported/distributed raw.

Well the honey IS solid and opaque, not liquidy and see-through, so I believe it is raw.  And I have bought plenty of raw honeys, there doesn't seem to be any particular ban on raw honey like there is with raw milk, in the USA.  Or at least, not here in California.

[raw-al]

Well the honey IS solid and opaque, not liquidy and see-through, so I believe it is raw.  And I have bought plenty of raw honeys, there doesn't seem to be any particular ban on raw honey like there is with raw milk, in the USA.  Or at least, not here in California.

Our honey is definitely raw unheated. It started out runny and now it is solid and opaque. That just means it is not fresh which means nothing.

[PaleoPhil]

I've had solid honeys that were centrifuged (not truly raw) and liquid honeys that were hand-packed to be truly raw. I've had honeys from the same company, one liquid and one solid, both of which the company guaranteed were hand-packed and truly raw. It would make no sense for the same company to make one truly raw honey and the other not. So like raw-al indicated, just because it's liquid doesn't mean it's not raw and just because it's solid doesn't mean it's truly raw.

There are lots of urban legends that get passed around the Internet that turn out to not be true. Another example is the belief that if suet or tallow is vividly yellow it must be 100% grassfed--not true.

[Wolf]

Well I have never seen regular commercial honey to become solid and opaque like these honeys are, even when kept for months or years, at most it becomes chunky and gritty.  I do have at least one honey that says on the label that it is unheated, and it is the same consistency and such as the other "raw" honeys, just different colours.  Plus, how could the manuka honey be bio-active if it has been pasteurized?  I don't know, they might have been all heated or pasteurized, the only way to know for 100% sure is if I collected the honey myself.  But they all seem pretty raw to me.  And I also didn't mean to make it seem like I think all liquidy honey is heat-treated, I know it is liquidy in the comb, but I didn't know solid/opaque meant it isn't fresh, but I would assume that none of the honeys I got would be fresh, since I can't seem to find any local honey.

[PaleoPhil]

Well I have never seen regular commercial honey to become solid and opaque like these honeys are....

Correct, when it comes to the extreme of lousy commercial honey, I've never seen them become solid, but I doubt anyone here eats that crap. The choice for us tends to be between various allegedly "raw" honeys. In other words, how raw should we go and does the fact that a honey is opaque and thick guarantee that it has never been heated at all?

As it turns out, just because a honey is thick or solid does not guarantee that it was not centrifuged and just because it is liquidy does not mean that it isn't raw in the sense that even Aajonus would accept. There are apparently more factors in honey density than just heating. In the normal human desire to simplify, folks tend to try to make the question as simple as "Does it turn solid or not"? Whereas the actual nature of raw honey is more complicated than that.

Plus, how could the manuka honey be bio-active if it has been pasteurized?  I don't know, they might have been all heated or pasteurized, the only way to know for 100% sure is if I collected the honey myself.  But they all seem pretty raw to me.

Some manuka honeys are not even claimed to be raw, much less are all raw by AV's standards. The makers of heated manuka honeys claim that they are bioactive despite being heated. If you want to know why they make that claim you could ask them. I'm not defending that claim and I'm not interested in heated manuka honeys, so it's irrelevant to me. Only heated manuka honeys are sold in my area. I tried one and didn't like the taste and I didn't notice any additional benefits from it vs. other honeys and it seemed to muck up my teeth more than local unheated honeys and it's expensive, so I haven't bothered with it again.

We actually had someone not long ago advocating in this forum for heated manuka honey. He seemed to be just a troll and didn't last long here.

And I also didn't mean to make it seem like I think all liquidy honey is heat-treated, I know it is liquidy in the comb, but I didn't know solid/opaque meant it isn't fresh, but I would assume that none of the honeys I got would be fresh, since I can't seem to find any local honey.

I've been talking about honeys as they are by the time you buy them, not in the hive. Opaque/thick honeys can be quite fresh, as shown by this honey that is opaque and thick even before it's removed from the honeycombs after the combs have been uncapped:



And it's even thicker after it has been centrifuged (which AV says mildly heats it) and separated from the wax and is ready to go in the containers:



Which do you think is more raw, this thick, opaque honey...


or this liquid honey that while dark is see-through?


According to the makers of these honeys, the thicker one is centrifuged and therefore heated according to AV, whereas the liquid one is hand packed, not centrifuged or heated in any way.

They're both yummy, BTW.

[RawZi]

    They're both yummy as you say, but how do you feel after eating the clear honey pictured?  I haven't tried it, but I have some clear honey that's supposed to be raw.  I've waited a year already to try it, as I had problems with other clear honeys before.

or this liquid honey that while dark is see-through?


According to the makers of these honeys, the thicker one is centrifuged and therefore heated according to AV, whereas the liquid one is hand packed, not centrifuged or heated in any way.

They're both yummy, BTW.

[PaleoPhil]

Well I prefer the taste of the thick, centrifuged honey, but it seems like the liquid one causes slightly less dental crud, possibly due to the fact that much of the pollen comes from neem trees, according to the makers of the honey. It's hard to say for sure, though, as I only tried one jar of the raw liquid neem forest honey.