Honey is taken from flowers by bees and stored in their second stomach. After transformation and brewing in the body, the polysaccharide in honey is transformed into monosaccharide glucose and fructose that can be directly absorbed by the human body. The water content is less than 23% and stored in the nest hole, sealed with beeswax. Honey crystallization is often seen in life. Many people have questions about whether honey crystallization is normal? How to restore the original state after honey crystallization? This article will tell you why honey crystallizes and how to restore honey crystallization.
Is honey crystallization normal?
Honey crystallizes easily, which is a physical phenomenon. The crystallization of honey is essentially a phenomenon and process in which glucose is separated from honey. From the point of view of molecular theory, glucose molecules in honey originally move disorderly, but when glucose in honey exceeds its solubility and becomes supersaturated solution, some glucose molecules begin to move and arrange regularly in honey to form a tiny crystal core and become a crystal center, More glucose molecules are regularly arranged on all sides of it, gradually forming larger crystals, which are separated from honey, which is honey crystallization.
The color of honey before and after crystallization will also be different, which is normal. Honey crystallization is a problem often encountered in the process of eating honey. With the extension of time and the change of temperature, especially in winter, honey often changes from liquid to crystalline state, and its color changes from dark to light. Most honey seeds are milky white or white, fine or rough translucent crystals after crystallization. This change of honey often causes some people's misunderstanding that it is caused by the addition of white sugar to honey. In fact, this is the natural physical change of honey, not the result of sugar.
Honey crystallization is a physical change phenomenon. It is the same as' water freezes at low temperature '. Its chemical composition and nutritional value have not changed and will not affect the quality of honey. The crystalline crystal is glucose, not foreign sugar in honey. In fact, honey really mixed with foreign sugar is not easy to crystallize. Honey easy to crystallize is pure honey. China's honey quality standard also stipulates the normal state of honey: 'transparent and viscous liquid or crystal'. Therefore, honey crystallization is a normal phenomenon, which has no effect on its nutritional composition and application value, nor on eating.
How does honey crystal recover?
When honey crystallizes, it can be boiled with warm water. The crystallized honey gradually melts at a temperature above 40 ℃, and the water temperature should not exceed 60 ℃. Too high water temperature will destroy the active nutrients of honey. If in winter, you can put the container on the heating pipe (don't be too hot to prevent scalding the container). After melting a little, you can pour it out for consumption. Of course, you can also put it on the heating pipe every day. When the temperature is high at noon in summer, put the honey crystal bottle in the hospital or balcony and let the sun shine for about two hours. You can also melt part of the crystalline honey.
It should be noted that the above methods will not restore the crystalline honey to its original state. To restore it to its original state, the crystalline honey must be heated to more than 80 ℃, but heating to more than 80 ℃ will destroy the original nutritional components of honey, so this method is not recommended.
Honey has crystallized, but the form has changed, and the nutrition is still there. We can directly eat crystallized honey. There is no problem with this.