Should You Eat Honey on a Ketogenic Diet Hey guys, it's Michael Kummer here,
and in today's video, I want to talk about the question," if you should have honey on the
ketogenic diet." But before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel,
and you click on the little alert button so you get notified when I publish more videos like this.
For those of you who've been following my blog and my YouTube channel,
you might know that I'm a beekeeper. So one of the questions that I
got very early on was well, "are you going to eat that honey?" since you're on a ketogenic diet.
And that made me pause for a moment and think about that because I hadn't really considered
including honey in my diet. In fact, I've been on a relatively low-carb
ketogenic diet. And on average, I ate between 5 and 10 net grams of carbs per
day. And I've been doing this for over two years now. And so when we got bees,
I started thinking about how I can incorporate the honey and should I incorporate honey into my diet.
And so, in this video, I want to talk about the pros and cons of doing so.
And give you some advice that can guide you whether or not you should be including honey
in your diet because it depends on a number of factors. There's unfortunately not a easy answer,
a yes or no answer, you know, several factors that influence whether or not
you should be including honey in your diet. Now, before we get into the details,
let's talk about honey, real quick. So you know what honey is made out of. Well, I'm not going
to tell you how honey is produced by the beast, but what you should know is that honey is mostly
sugar. In fact, it's a combination of fructose and glucose, and one tablespoon of honey
has approximately 17 grams of carbs, out of which you get 16 grams of sugar.
Again a combination of fructose and glucose. So it's somewhat similar to regular sugar,
even though the ratio in honey between fructose and glucose is slightly different.
But it's obviously pure sugar at the end of the day with some beneficial enzymes and
other components that the bees add to it. But at the end of the day, it's sugar. One
of the main reasons besides being a beekeeper to include honey and more carbs in general in my diet
were a couple of realizations. Well, first of all, I've been on a diet, as I've mentioned before,
and its a super low carb diet for over two years. And I've realized that, while I
didn't feel bad, I'd feel great on most days. I didn't feel as best as I could. I've noticed
that on those days where I included a few more carbs. I actually felt better than on days where I
didn't. And what I mean by that is. For instance, I had to pee less often on days where I ate more
carbs. My sex drive was higher on days where I had more carbs. Slight symptoms of the keto flu,
even though I've been on keto for a long time. I still got those symptoms from time to time.
I'm not going to go into too many details on why that is. But it has to do with emptying glycogen
stores and then replenishing them through a process of gluconeogenesis. So basically,
my body had to create glucose from non-carbohydrate sources like protein,
which is a very expensive process for the body. And so that's emptying of glycogen stores whenever
my body needed glucose during workouts, for example, and then replenishing them
slowly was not ideal. The other thing that I've realized is that from an ancestral perspective,
from an evolutionary perspective, it was very unlikely that our ancestors were in ketosis.
For years in a row or even for weeks in a row. Whenever they found seasonal fruits,
whenever they found honey, such as in the case of the Hazda. One of the remaining Hunter gatherer
tribes in Africa that Dr. Gustin and Dr. Saladino, two of the guys that I follow, recently visited.
They realized that they eat a lot of honey. Whenever they find a hive of wild bees, they go to
town on it. And they eat it. And during that time, they are most definitely not in ketosis. And so,
I realized that being in ketosis all the time isn't necessary. And it's probably also not ideal,
at least not for me. And so I started including more types of carbohydrates,
and honey was a very obvious one because it's animal based and I follow an animal based diet.
So using honey instead of other sources of carbs was an obvious choice for me. So I thought more
about the whole process of who should and who shouldn't include honey in their diet. And I
think ultimately it boils down to what your goals are and in what metabolic state you are right now.
If you just started a ketogenic diet for the purpose of losing weight, of treating or curing
a metabolic disease, be it you know, if you have pre-diabetes or diabetes, if you suffer from
any other metabolic disease. That triggered you to
go on a ketogenic path to lose weight, fix those problems. Then I don't think it's ideal to start,
including honey or similar types of carbs as part of your diet, because if your body is
not capable of efficiently and effectively using glucose as a source of fuel. And then immediately
switching back to burning fat and using ketones as a source of fuel, then you don't want to do this.
You want to train your body first to be efficient in burning ketones and in burning fats. That's
the ultimate goal ofthe ketogenic diet. And so, if you're new to keto, if you just started, I do not
recommend you include honey in your diet. However, If you're metabolically healthy and metabolically
flexible, meaning that your body can indeed. Switch back and forth between different types
of fuel than by all means. I think you can. And you probably also should include honey
and similar types of seasonal, local carbs, like, seasonal and local fruits, for example, in your
diet. And so I've done a couple of experiments using two tools that I have at my disposal.
One is a continuous glucose monitor from Levels, as the name implies, continuously monitors my
blood sugar. And so I can tell exactly what types of foods, what types of exercise,
stress, for example, influence my blood sugar and indirectly. Then also my blood insulin levels. And
these two have had an impact on my ketones. And as far as ketone measurements. I use a
breath, ketone analyzer from Biosense. You might've seen it in another review. I will link
all of that down below in the description, but basically, I have used these two tools to find out
how honey in particular impacts not only my blood sugar but also my ketone levels.
I have stopped chasing ketones. I don't believe I have to be in ketosis all the time. But
interestingly enough, I found out that eating honey doesn't impact my ketone levels for
more than maybe 12 hours or so. And so what I've basically done is I've started including honey.
And whenever I say, you can have, honey, you cannot have honey.
I'm not talking about a quarter of a teaspoon or something. I'm talking about
a significant amount. So I started eating one to two tablespoons, big tablespoons of honey
after lunch and after dinner. So every day, I have between 30 to 60 grams or even 35 to 70 grams of
honey, depending on how new you are to the ketogenic diet, you probably know that you
should have approximately 25 grams of net carbs per day to sustain ketosis.
I had significantly more three times as much on many days. And what I've noticed is
that whenever I have honey, my blood sugar would spike by approximately 40 points or so.
But within an hour of that spike, my blood sugar would fully recover and feed back to baseline.
And so not a big deal at the end of the day, but more interestingly though, is that my breath
ketone levels wouldn't go all the way to zero. So if I measure in the morning, these days, I measure
in the morning between 5-14 ACEs, which is a clue as to approximately 0.5 to 1.4 mmol per liter.
So 0.5 is where nutritional ketosis starts. So I'm always in nutritional ketosis in the morning.
And sometimes I'm even, in the mid range at 1.4 or so. When I eat honey, for example,
today, I had two big tablespoons of funny after lunch and I've noticed a
spike and about three hours later, I measured my ketone levels and my ketones were about 2.3.
So yes, my ketones levels were negatively impacted, but my body was still producing ketones
at that point. I wasn't completely out of ketosis. I was out of nutritional ketosis, if you just go
by the raw numbers, but my body was still making ketones. And in the evening, I'm going to measure
again later today. But every single morning, since I've done this and conducted this experiment and
that's been going on for two to three weeks. Every single morning, I was back in ketosis.
Even though in the evening, I had another two tablespoons of honey.
So that's tells you that with only a break of 12 hours, approximately from the time of dinner or
from the time I had the honey to the next morning, when I wake up that's enough time for my body.
To switch back to burning ketones for fuel. And that is the metabolic flexibility
that you ultimately want to achieve. That should be your goal of a ketogenic diet or any diet
whatsoever that you either achieve or maintain that metabolic flexibility. Your body should
be fine with whatever fuel source you give him. Be it fat, eat carbs, and it should be able to
switch back and forth. And if you're in that position, then I absolutely think you can
and should have honey. The couple of things that are important when consuming honey is
make sure it has never been heated. So it's definitely has to be unpasteurized.
It should be raw. Ideally, from a health perspective, it should be local. So you get
exposed to some of the local pollen and impurities and everything that is part of honey. So don't be
afraid, even if you're on a ketogenic diet. You can include honey in your diet. If you want to,
measure your ketone levels, measure your blood sugar, see how your body reacts.
But ultimately , I've reached a point where I've gone from paleo
to keto to carnivore to more animal based. And I feel really comfortable where I am right now.
I don't chase ketones. I don't check my weight I just go by how I feel and I've been feeling great.
And honey has been a great addition to my diet. it doesn't impact negatively impact my,
ketones either I mean I don't really care if I'm in ketosis every single day or not
anymore. Uh, again, I just go by how I feel. But whenever I test it, I am in ketosis. And that is
fascinating to me because if you would've told me that the couple of months ago or a year ago, that
you can have 60 grams of sugar per day from honey, that is, and still be in ketosis the next morning.
I wouldn't have believed it. But that's what my take on it is. So again, if you're metabolically
not healthy, if you're trying keto to lose weight or to get to a metabolic health and flexibility,
I would hold off on consuming honey. But if you're metabolically flexible and healthy and
by all means, dig in and try local honey. And, um, if you liked this video,
give it a thumbs up. If you didn't like it, let me know in the comments,
what I could have done better and I'll see you next time. So just a dinner, um,
low carb, low carb dinner, and I'm going to have. again Um, two of these tablespoons of organic raw
unpasteurized, honey, and we'll see what it's gonna do to my blood sugar and ketone levels.
So it's the morning after I had, uh, two big tablespoons of honey after dinner.
And, um, obviously my glucose reading are all. Well, I'm going to show you the graph here in
the morning. Um, and now we're going to do a ketone test. And see if I'm back in ketosis or
if the honey kicked me out of ketosis. And so we'll find that out here in a moment.
Let's see when it comes back with
7 So that's, uh, 7 ACEs or the equivalent of 0.7 mmol per liter. So I'm clearly in nutritional
ketosis, honey, didn't do anything to me. What I did at the moment, my blood sugar spiked.
Um, my ketone levels likely went down, maybe even to zero. I don't know I should have
measured. I'll do it today. Um, but the night was enough to make my body go back to using
fat for fuel and produce ketones. And so that's metabolic flexibility.
And, um, we'll see how it goes today in the next few days.