Pot of honey (Photograph: Getty)
Oh honey.
There’s a brand new social media problem on TikTok and it’s bearing the hashtag #FrozenHoneyChallenge. And, no, this has nothing to do with placing your important different within the freezer, which, by the best way, you shouldn’t do.
As an alternative, to arrange for this Frozen Honey Problem, you’d fill a water bottle stuffed with honey or honey blended with another substance and put the bottle into the freezer. As soon as the entire concoction is frozen, the problem includes squeezing the bottle so {that a} frozen, golden shaft of honey comes out the opening after which taking an enormous chunk of the shaft, whereas filming the entire thing. In doing so, you find yourself consuming much more honey that you just usually would in a single sitting. In any case, you might be extra used to “a splash of honey” in your tea slightly than a shaft of honey.
Apparently, individuals are discovering that getting the shaft like this may be fairly candy. Some appear to be utilizing pure honey whereas others look like mixing the honey with different issues reminiscent of sweet, various kinds of syrup like corn syrup, tea, corn starch and boba. Right here’s a tweet from YouTube about this entire pattern:
Whoa, that’s an ostentatious quantity of honey. Honey is basically sugar and water, though it does have proteins, amino acids, numerous enzymes, and small quantities of the B nutritional vitamins, vitamin C, and minerals reminiscent of calcium, iron, zinc, potassium, phosphorous, magnesium, selenium, chromium and manganese. It’s not shocking that sugar blended with sugar appears tasty to many. Phrases like “frozen sweet” have emerged to explain frozen honey. But as Kalhan Rosenblatt reported for NBC News, the phrases like “I feel sick now” and “gotta go get my stomach pumped” even have emerged after folks have downed the frozen honey.
That shouldn’t shocking to anybody who’s eaten a pail of sweet corn in a single sitting and subsequently mentioned, “what have I finished?” Such a lot of honey is a variety of sugar. One tablespoon of honey usually has 17 grams of sugar. Consuming that a lot sugar all of sudden can primarily be a honey boo boo to your gastrointestinal tract. It might trigger constipation. It might additionally result in bloating, cramps, and diarrhea. This may be notably extreme when have you could have fructose malabsorption, which is whenever you intestinal cells don’t break down fructose, the first sugar in honey, in addition to they may. In response to the Nationwide Library of Drugs’s Medline Plus, “fructose malabsorption is thought to affect approximately 40 percent of individuals in the Western hemisphere; its cause is unknown.”
Your intestinal cells saying, “what the fructose,” shouldn’t be the one doable drawback. Repeatedly consuming a lot of sugar shouldn’t be good to your well being. Extra sugar consumption has been linked to larger blood stress, irritation, weight acquire, diabetes, fatty liver illness, coronary heart illness, and stroke. It’s not nice to your enamel both. So that you most likely don’t need to make consuming frozen honey a daily factor.
There could also be spore to this. As I’ve coated earlier than for Forbes, honey could include spores of a micro organism referred to as Clostridium botulinum, which is why you shouldn’t give infants honey. That is the micro organism that produces botulinum toxin, in any other case referred to as Botox. In the case of Botox, measurement and location matter. Inject a bit Botox within the face and maybe nobody raises an eyebrow. Nonetheless, a Clostridium botulinum an infection within the intestines is a distinct story. This micro organism can secrete the botulinum toxin that may trigger extreme meals poisoning and even demise. Loss of life is lots worse than dropping the flexibility to not look shocked.
Now, you as a teen or an grownup could give you the chance deal with a bit Clostridium botulinum, since you doubtless have sufficient different micro organism to crowd out and out-compete this harmful micro organism. Nonetheless, an excessive amount of honey containing an excessive amount of of this micro organism could also be a distinct story. So, it’s not utterly clear what your danger botulism could also be when consuming massive quantities of honey. In any case, there doesn’t appear to have been any “feed an grownup massive quantities of honey day-after-day and see if she or he will get botulism” research.
Nonetheless, “bee” cautious about consuming an excessive amount of honey without delay. Frozen honey could appear tasty. It could be getting buzz. However don’t be a kind of of us who does one thing silly that finally ends up making others go, “oh, Honey.”