How Many Calories in Honey?

Obesity levels have skyrocketed in the recent years. As a result, weight-loss hacks have cropped up in great numbers. One of these is calorie-counting and calorie-burning.

One tablespoon of honey contains 64 calories. A teaspoon has 22 calories. What does that mean? How many calories are recommended?

These and other questions form the subject of this article.

Basic Facts about Calories

Calories are units of energy; and for that reason, we can’t live without them. Calories are what give you the energy to do anything: to get up, to walk, to eat, and so forth. Like a car burning fuel, our bodies burn calories so as to get us moving.

That’s the side of calories that doesn’t get enough attention – that we need them. The infamous side of calories is about what they do to your body once you accumulate excessive quantities of calories.

Your body stores calories in form of glycogen or fat. If you ingest more calories than your body needs, you begin to get fatter. So to slim down to a more natural look, you must burn down the excessive calories. How: by working out.

Recommended Daily Calorie Intake

The optimal daily calorie intake varies for different individuals based on factors such as height, weight, age, sex, and activity level. For instance, a twenty-year old basketball player needs more calories per day than a fifty-year old librarian.

The US government recommends 2700 calories per day for the average man and 2200 for the average woman. On the other hand, the UK’s National Health Service recommends 2500 for men and 2000 for women. And the Food and Agriculture Organization recommends 1800 calories for the average adult.

To find out your optimal daily calorie intake, visit websites like Authority Nutrition, FatSecret, MyFitness Pal, and Cron-o-meter. These websites have web calorie calculators that can determine how many calories you need per day. All you have to do is input relevant details such as age, height, weight, gender, and so forth.

Calories in Honey

As I said at the beginning of the article, a tablespoon of honey contains 64 calories (a teaspoon has 22 calories). Is that a lot? Well, consider this: a tablespoon of sugar contains 46 calories (a teaspoon has 16 calories). In other words, honey contains more calories than sugar.

That may seem like a bad thing, but in a way it isn’t. Since honey is sweeter than sugar, we use lower quantities of it than we do of table sugar. We are less likely to over-indulge in honey, and that’s why it is considered a healthier choice in spite of its higher calorie count.

How to Enjoy Honey and at the Same Time be Healthy

I have shared with you the recommended daily calorie intake. I have also told you where you can calculate your optimal daily calorie requirement. Using these figures, you can calculate what your daily calorie intake is. You can then figure out if you have been eating too much honey and cut down.

The best way to enjoy a honey-rich existence is by reducing your intake of simple sugars in your diet. For instance, cut down on the candy, and the cakes, and the chocolates, all that sweet stuff.

You see, honey contains two basic sugar units: glucose and fructose. The same is true of granulated table sugar. The difference is that the two are individual units in honey and linked in table sugar.

The problem is: fructose is not as effective at converting into energy as glucose. For that reason, processed foods containing granulate sugar are more likely to increase your weight than honey.

Also, the highly processed table sugar has all its naturally occurring minerals removed during manufacturing. In the end, what you have are “empty calories” that do not contain any nutrition. On the other hand, honey contains vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, amino acids and enzymes.

If you must eat sweet things, use natural sweeteners – in this case, honey, of course – rather than processed sugar.

In conclusion, how much honey per day are you allowed? Don’t do more than 6 teaspoons a day. And if you are getting sugar from other sources too, don’t let the total sugar intake exceed 6 teaspoons.

Final Verdict

If you want to keep your weight down, you should track and monitor your daily calorie intake. This will help you establish a consistent weight loss program.

You have learned that honey contains more calories than table sugar. But since you don’t use honey as much, it is the best alternative to sugar. And it is even healthier and packed with more nutrition than processed granulated sugar.