HONEY VERSUS SUGAR.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 591, 6 August 1913, Page 3

HONEY VERSUS SUGAR.

Medical men the world over are preaching with greater and greater insistence that if humanity would avoid liver, kidney, and digestive troubles in adult and old age for themselves, and particularly for thair beloved children, they must curtail, as far as practicable, the present-day excessive indulgence in sugar sweets. There is also saccharine, that deadly foe to good health, to be dealt with; but in our own Dominion the rigid Sales of Food and Drugs Act, with the stringent regulations that came into force on April Ist this year, will take care of this menace to our lives. So, to consider cane and beet sugar only, we may start by pointing out that it is what chemists call a dead compound i.f.. the life under which it originally existed, viz. in the living sugar cane, has been interfered With, and in short killed, in the process of manufacturing sugar. Thus the resultant product, separated from what in life was its natural companion chemicals, is, by the laws of chemistry, 0:1 the look-out, as it were, to join to some other companionable substance or element, to get back to the previous unseparated state it once enjoyed, In a Word, if sugar could feel it would feci lonely. To prevent : its reconstruction in the human sysj tern, by attacking and breaking down I some other compound in the blood ! stream, is the work of the kidneys, j which rush out of the blood stream all i the sugar not actually needed by the ! system. If allowed to remain in the 1 blood it becomes, by itg very natural desire to attach itself to any asimiiable element that it may have an affinity for (and thus robbing the blcod stream of some perhaps absolutely necessary component), an actual and a very dangerous poison! It seems absurd to speak of so common an article of daily use as sugar as a poison; but that it is so is absolutely proved in the case of that dread disease diabetes, of which so many erroneously state that it turns the patient's blood into sugar. This is not so. The fact is that the diseased kidneys are no lorger able to take out of the blood stream that exzess not needed by the system to repair daily waste, and the sugar accumulates as a poison. That, as everyone knows results in so many case 3in certain death. The qugar that nature does make use of has first of all to be converted into "glycogen" bv the liver; in other words, the liver breaks up the cane sugar into two other kinds of sjgar, and makes honey out of it, chemically stvleu" "glycogen." Now, it is but a very short method of reasoning that brings us to realise the fact that if folk can but be persuaded to make honey a larger part of their daily food and cut back 0:1 that 'crcan-slrainin?, health-destroy-ing sugar, we should not hear so much of biiliousness from overworked livers through handling cane sugar, nor of kidney diseases through overwork in ' driving out over-eaten honey as suaar eaten in excess; but such is not the case. Sugar expslled from the system is not thrown off as sugar, but ha 3 4p be broken down by the kidneys into a number of complex chemical elements, which honey in large measure already consists of. Anyway, doctors are all agreed that the majority of the present-day kdney diseases and ailments are the direct result of the eating of sugar in excess during childhood, and similarly liver diseases are largely the result of strain upon that organ in coverting sugar into giycoge. Now, sugar is purely a heat-prcducer only, while honey, in addition to its heat giving properties contains in quantities properly balanced for immediate use by the human system such valuable elements as sulphur, iron, phosphors, chlorine, lime, magnesia, silicon, potassim and maganese. Most of these elements are the vegetable salts so absolutely nejeesary tolhe repair of the system that none can exist without them, and they are mainly supplied by those green vegewhich so few persons eat sufficiently. Now doctors are finding out that these necessary chemical salts are so perfectly combined with the energy-providing capabilites of honey that they ate reacribing a dessert ur a tablesponful of honey in a glass of water six times a day as the newest cure for nervous exhaustion, and also for most other nervous exhaustion, and also for most other nervous diseases, and in ca;c3 where patients have bean so far gone as to be past swallowing; an injection of honey with two parts water has saved hundreds of lives, particularly in the United States hospitals, proving that honey is simply absorbed by (he system exactly a3 water is aborbed i.e., without digestion. Thua we see what a perfect food we have been despising, or at least neglecting;

whilst mere commercialism, that insane desire on the part of modern manufacturers to get money, has been blinding us to the provision that allwise Providence produced for human sustenance, and we have been simply gorging and poisoning our systems witrV'a chemically-produced subterfuge called sugar, paying the price of our ignorance in the untimely shortening of millons upon millions of lives, to say nothing of the misery of sugarcreated rheumatism, which the use of honey will, in the long run, undoubtedly cure. To mothers of families do doctors specially appeal to stop this everlasting application to ths sugar basin and the lolly packet with a view to providing some little joy for the children. In the quantities in which most children eat them lollies and cakes ara 'imply a store for future trouble. It irt appalling the evil being created for their adult ye*rs in the over-consumption of pies, cake?, jams, lollies, and indeed, treacle and sugar on their bread. If more honey and less sweets Were fed the rising generation and indeed, used by the adults too, we should very soon see bonnie faces on our town-bred crowds, and hear a great deal less of the terrible il.ls and suffering of adult age. Who has not a friend or rela : live that is suffering, or lias suilVreii, from rheumatism? Most rheumatism is caused by over-eating sugar. . It

has no oilier attribute than a forcecreator, li dees not build up the bociy; whereas honey calls for no outlay of physie-U energy to first of -ill make it useful to the system, and besides provides the life-giving mineral salts that sugar never had and never can give. If you sit down fegged out

st any futuro time, try this: Swallow slowly a teaspooi-ful of honey, either liquid or candied will do —for most pure honey h:ccm;s solid, whereas hnpav honey never goo 3 solid —and if in ten minutes yon do not feel another person as far as fatigue goes, you want to see a doctor. The honey enters immediately into the blood, and thus relieves the fatigue and feeds the body. Sugar, on the contrary, takes

a little more cut of you while you digest if, before it becomes available. See the point? Be wise. Act upon it, and save your health. Also be advised and save those precious babies' Stop their sugar supply that is robbing their life-energy! Give them honey, and sound health with it. But will you, mother? They are your babies, not mine!