Honey is a natural food produced by bees, characterized by being sweet and highly nutritious. Due to these characteristics, it has become an extremely popular sweetener. However, the first honey cultivation took place around 2500 BC, and before that, individuals resorted to other methods to sweeten food. So, in today's article, let's talk about what people used to sweeten their food before honey.
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How did people sweeten their food before honey existed?
Honey is an energy source rich in glucose and fructose, which can be used as food, sweetener or even medicine. According to interpretations of cave paintings in Europe, India and Africa that show individuals collecting honey from bee nests, it is possible to state that humans began to harvest honey around 8,000 B.C.
From then on, other peoples began to work with honey and discovered some of its uses. In Greece and Rome, for example, some scientists and doctors studied the virtues of honey, discovering that it could be used medicinally.
Honey has become an extremely popular sweetener. To give you an idea, according to a report by the Agricultural Center at the University of California, Americans consumed around 596 million pounds of honey in 2017 alone. In addition, most manufactured products use honey as a sweetener, which happens due to the fact that this food is highly nutritious and has great antioxidant potential. It is a great natural sweetener that can replace industrialized and refined sugar with the same efficiency, in a healthier way.
Honey only came to America much later. So the American Indians had to find other ways to sweeten their food. Thus, they are responsible for the development of many sweeteners used today, such as corn and maple syrup. In addition, our ancestors also appreciated the consumption of shallower fruits due to their high sugar content. The Indians have always been in favor of sugar consumption, due to its energy supply.
