Is honey good for weight loss?

Honey & weight loss research

Does honey help you lose weight?

A 2022 review in Frontiers in Nutrition looked at honey and obesity across nine studies: six in animals and three in people. In the animals, honey reduced body weight, body fat and fat cell size. In the human trials it was a different story. Most showed no significant weight-reducing effect, none showed weight gain, and the authors noted that diet and activity weren't controlled and high-quality trials are scarce.

That gap between mice and people is the most important fact on this page, because the animal results are what usually get quoted.

The most often cited human result is a 2008 trial of 55 overweight or obese adults. Those eating 70 grams of honey a day for 30 days lost 1.3% of their body weight and 1.1% of their body fat, compared with a group eating sucrose. Seventy grams is about 3 tablespoons, or about 213 calories a day. For a 200-pound person, 1.3% is about 2.6 pounds. It's a small study, it's a month long, and it doesn't support adding honey to what you already eat.

A tighter test points the other way. In a 2015 crossover trial, 55 adults, 27 of them with impaired glucose tolerance, had 50 grams of carbohydrate a day from honey, sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup for two weeks each. Blood glucose and insulin didn't differ by treatment. Its title says it plainly: the three had similar metabolic effects.

The fair summary: there's no good evidence that honey causes weight loss in people, and a little evidence that swapping it for sugar might not hurt. That's a long way from a weight loss food.

What honey is

What is honey, exactly?

Honey is a sweet, thick liquid produced by honeybees from the nectar of flowers. The process involves regurgitation, enzyme activity and water evaporation, and the bees work remarkably hard for it, visiting a very large number of flowers for every pound.

What makes honey different from table sugar isn't only its origin. During production, bee enzymes break down sucrose into two simpler sugars, fructose and glucose. You'll often read that your body digests this more easily than table sugar. Your body splits table sugar into those same two sugars quickly anyway, so in a healthy adult it's not much of a head start.

Honey nutrition facts

How many calories does honey have?

Spoon for spoon, honey has more calories than sugar, because it's denser. Gram for gram it has fewer, because about a sixth of it is water. Since you sweeten tea with a spoon and not a scale, the spoon is the number that counts.

Honey vs table sugar, by USDA values

So a straight swap adds calories. Two teaspoons of sugar in your oatmeal is about 32 calories, and two teaspoons of honey is about 43. To break even you have to use about 1 and a half teaspoons of honey. Many people find honey sweet enough to do that, and it's the only version of this swap that doesn't cost you anything.

Honey also has trace amounts of B vitamins, potassium, calcium, iron, copper and zinc. Trace is the right word at a teaspoon a day. What sets it apart from plain sugar is its polyphenols and flavonoids, antioxidants that explain why researchers have looked at it for metabolic health at all.

Honey glycemic index vs sugar

Is honey's glycemic index really lower?

The glycemic index (GI) measures how quickly foods raise blood sugar, with lower numbers meaning a more gradual rise. You'll see honey listed at 50 to 60 and sugar at 65 to 80. The international GI tables are less dramatic: honey at 61, plus or minus 3, and sucrose at 65, plus or minus 4.

Those ranges touch. GI does vary by floral source, and you'll see low numbers quoted for acacia honey in particular, but we couldn't verify a specific figure, so we won't give you one.

Here's the part that gets skipped. The idea that a lower GI prevents the crash that sends you back to the snack drawer is a popular story, and a 4-point gap won't deliver it. When researchers measured blood glucose and insulin after two weeks on honey or sugar, in that same crossover trial, they found no difference.

What moves your blood sugar far more is how much you eat and what you eat it with. A teaspoon in Greek yogurt is a different event from three tablespoons in a smoothie, whichever sweetener it is.

How to use honey for weight loss

How should you use honey on a diet?

The useful rule is substitution, not addition. Swap the sugar in your morning oatmeal or tea for a little less honey, and you get about the same sweetness for about the same calories.

• Measure it. A "drizzle" poured from the bottle can easily be a tablespoon or two, about 64 to 128 calories. A teaspoon is a teaspoon.
• Pair it with protein and fiber. Greek yogurt or peanut butter on whole grain toast takes it from a sweet hit to part of a breakfast that keeps you full.
• Skip the rituals. Some people like warm water with honey and lemon in the morning and find it helps them cut back on other sweets. That's fine as a habit, but it isn't a proven weight loss method, and it's still about 21 calories a teaspoon.

Weight loss comes down to a calorie deficit you can repeat for months, which makes this mostly a workload problem. Honey is a rounding error next to dinner. If dinner is what keeps going sideways, that's the part worth fixing.

Health benefits of honey

What else does honey do for your health?

Even if honey's direct effect on weight is small, some of its other effects are worth knowing. Here's how each one holds up.

• Antioxidant protection. Honey contains phenolic compounds and flavonoids that help neutralize free radicals in lab work. This review is mostly about mechanisms, and its authors call for more research. It doesn't show that a teaspoon protects you from anything.
• Cardiovascular markers. A review of 7 trials and 370 people found total cholesterol down about 15 mg/dL, LDL down about 19 mg/dL and HDL up about 2 mg/dL with honey. Those are small trials measuring blood markers rather than heart attacks, so the effect on heart health still needs further study.
• Antibacterial effects & more. A 2023 review of 48 clinical trials and 3,655 people found benefits for wound healing, cough in children and mucositis, especially when honey replaced other sweeteners. The authors note that the number of trials is limited and the trials weren't standardized.

If you were already going to eat something sweet, honey is a reasonable pick. None of this is a reason to start eating more of it.

Honey limits & safety

How much honey is too much?

Despite its benefits, honey is a concentrated source of sugar and calories, and the FDA counts it as added sugar on the label. You'll often read that most experts recommend 1 to 2 teaspoons a day. We couldn't find a source for that number, so here's the arithmetic instead.

The American Heart Association's limit is about 100 calories of added sugar a day for women and 150 for men. At 21 calories a teaspoon, that's a little under 5 teaspoons of honey for women and about 7 for men, if honey is your only added sugar. It usually isn't. So a teaspoon or two leaves plenty of room, and it's a sensible budget when you're watching calories, even if nobody's study says it's the right one.

Not all honey is what the jar says, either. Some commercial products have been blended with corn syrup or other sweeteners, and an ingredient list can't catch a product that isn't labeled honestly. Buying from a beekeeper or brand you trust is the practical answer. You'll also hear that darker honey has more antioxidants. We didn't find that in the sources cited here, and at a teaspoon a day it wouldn't change much anyway.

If you have diabetes or insulin resistance, talk to your healthcare provider before using more honey. It raises blood sugar like the sugar it mostly is, and it counts toward your carbohydrate intake.

So honey is fine in small amounts, a slightly more interesting sweetener than sugar and not a route to weight loss. The evidence that would make it one doesn't exist in people yet.

What moves the scale is the rest of your day, and that usually comes down to who's cooking and how much. Our complete meal prep guide covers how to get ahead of that yourself. If you'd rather not cook, the Weight Loss Meal Plan is portion-controlled and calorie-controlled, with every meal's numbers on our nutrition page. There's still room in the day for a teaspoon of honey in your tea.

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