Golden Syrup Vs Manuka Honey

Squall Leonhart

I eat porridge for breakfast in the morning, and like to sweeten it a little, I had been using golden syrup, and thought I should go for honey, and thought I'd go for Manuka as that's supposedly healthier.

Looking at nutritional information for both, see attached, why is golden syrup any worse than honey for me??

When I scale for comparison, 15g of golden syrup only has 1 extra calorie, and 0.1g of carbohydrate extra.

I'm sure it must have to do with the way our body processes refined or 'artificial' sugars compared to natural occuring sugars, but how can someone know this from looking at nutrition labels?

Alf Veedersane

Unless you use it by the bucket, I wouldn't really bother trying to quantify the minute difference between one and the other

Squall Leonhart

That's kind of my point, even though one is purportedly much better than the other, does it really make any slight bit of difference at all to use the 'bad' sweetener in my porridge as opposed to the 'good' sweetener. It doesn't seem so.

I'm just curious whether I'm missing something, or there's a bigger picture, or a valid reason to ditch the golden syrup (which is far tastier!)

Alf Veedersane

Manuka is touted as having all sorts of curative powers but aside from the lack of evidence to back that up, most of the manuka honey you'll find on the shops' shelves won't be any better for you than common-or-garden honey.

Squall Leonhart

Thanks for your input

Golden syrup may be making a come back ha ha :rolleyes::P

Markcheese

Apparently there's a hell of a lot more Manuka honey consumed worldwide than produced -
I'm not mad about the flavour of regular Manuka - and to be honest would take a spoon of golden syrup over a spoon of any honey on my porridge-
Usually I just go brown sugar -

Squall Leonhart

Markcheese wrote: »

Apparently there's a hell of a lot more Manuka honey consumed worldwide than produced

I suppose that accounts for the cost of the stuff. The jar I bought in Tesco last week (Boyne Valley Active 10+) was 9.99, supply/demand situation??

On that note, is there really much of a difference between 7+, 10+, 15+, 18+...? The price of a jar rises steeply for every gradation.

From wikipedia; There is a confusing range of systems for rating the strength of mānuka honeys. In one UK chain in 2013, two products were labelled “12+ active” and “30+ total activity” respectively for “naturally occurring peroxide activity” and another “active 12+” in strength for “total phenol activity”, yet none of the three was labelled for the strength of the non-peroxide antimicrobial activity specific to mānuka honey

Give me Lyle's Golden Syrup Active 30+ any day

Alf Veedersane

Markcheese wrote: »

Apparently there's a hell of a lot more Manuka honey consumed worldwide than produced

And it's consumed by the 1.47 billion people that were in Thomond Park to see Munster beat the All Blacks in '78

rubadub

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

I suppose that accounts for the cost of the stuff.

It is in high demand, but his post was really explaining to watch out as a lot of it is fake.

I think the figure I saw was that the UK alone consume more honey labelled as manuka than is produced worldwide. And you might have presumed the UK market might be more vigalant than other countries.

Squall Leonhart

rubadub wrote:

It is in high demand, but his post was really explaining to watch out as a lot of it is fake.

Ahhh, I feel a tad silly now haha! Reading back its obvious that's what he was saying.

You'd imagine it would be a strictly regulated business, apparently not.