All about Manuka Honey

 Sorry about this my New Zealand friends.

I found some very tested comments from a BBC. It is not good news for Hanuka honey producers. here it is:

 Manuka honey has become increasingly popular in recent years, and can be very expensive. It tends to be sold as having health benefits - but what is the evidence for these?


Manuka honey originated in New Zealand, and it is made from nectar collected by bees that forage on the wild manuka tree, which give it a distinctive flavour. But what about its supposed health benefits?
Most honey is believed to have some bacteria killing properties because it contains chemicals that produce hydrogen peroxide. However, in 1991 a study from the Honey Research Unit in New Zealand showed that when you remove the hydrogen peroxide from a range of honeys, manuka was the only type that kept its ability to kill bacteria. This is due to the presence of a unique ingredient, now identified as methylglyoxal, which has specific antimicrobial properties.


In response to this discovery, jars of manuka honey began to be marketed bearing a UMF number – "Unique Manuka Factor" – relating to how many bacteria the honey could kill once the hydrogen peroxide had been removed. The labeling on jars has, however, caused some confusion. As well as the UMF rating, some jars display MGO, (methylglyoxal) which equates to the same sort of measurement, while others show NPA or TA. The NPA (non-peroxide activity) rating is similarly founded on the level of methyglyoxal the honey contains once the hydrogen peroxide has been removed. TA is instead the total activity, so this includes the hydrogen peroxide, which is present in normal honey. At the same time, some jars can be found with ‘Activity’ or ‘Active’ next to numbers, while some just have numbers alone with no explanation as to their justification.

The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) in New Zealand has released its own voluntary labelling guidelines.

Sorry i lost the link to the above expose??? Never mind see this one:

Meddling kids confirm mānuka honey isn’t panacea

By Thomas Lumley

The Sunday Star-Times has a story about a small, short-term, unpublished randomised trial of mānuka honey for preventing minor illness. There are two reasons this is potentially worth writing about: it was done by primary school kids, and it appears to be the largest controlled trial in humans for prevention of illness.
Here are the results (which I found from the Twitter account of the school’s lab, run by Carole Kenrick, who is  named in the story)

And:

You might, at a stretch, say mānuka honey could affect bacteria in the gut, but that’s actually been tested, and any effects are pretty small. Even in wound healing, it’s quite likely that any benefit is due to the honey content rather than the magic of mānuka — and the trials don’t typically have a normal-honey control.

check this link for the whole article.









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