What is the response for honey in Singapore (this is where I live - a tiny country in Southeastern Asia)? I noticed that most people know very little about honey and its benefits. Here, honey is probably used most in barbeque foods, eaten as a sauce for breakfast pancakes, and to make throat-soothing or thirst quenching icy honey drink, a popular drink in such a hot climate. Not many people know much about the goodness of honey, especially for the health of women, elderly, and children, or how it can be used in their diet or cooking. What does honey mean to the average housewives in Singapore? Yes, it costs much more than table sugar but they don’t really know how much more extra value they could gain if they and their families eat honey instead of table sugar. Applying honey on toast or bread like the Europeans or Americans is somewhat strange and bizarre for most locals. And how foreigners spoon honey straight from the jar and drizzle it over fruit, pancakes, and waffles, how they use honey as a natural sweetener in place of sugar in hot drinks, and how they use honey in place of granulated sugar in desserts such as puddings – are all not common knowledge and practices here.

Both general interest and knowledge level of honey in Singapore is low. I believe many people here don’t really know how honey is actually produced. Yes, from the honey bees, but that’s about all most people know, nothing more. Many don’t even know that there are different varieties of honey – honey in Singapore is pretty standard, basically sweet and nothing more. Actually, I can understand why this is so, most of the people here are only familiar with the mass produced honey on supermarket shelves, a homogenous blend that makes each jar look the same and have the same mild, unexciting mainstream flavor. Many don't know that there is so much more to honey, that honey from each bee colony is really a snapshot of that landscape, the flowers and crop that florish there, and that time period. They don't know how much they are missing out there when it comes to honey and its varying flavour, profiles and facades. Attitudes towards honey are probably like decades ago where people saw all wine as basically either red or white.

Also, it seems to me that people here don’t really know what honey to look for – which brand, and know what is considered as good quality honey. Some of the youngsters perhaps will at most consider and grab and enjoy a honey stick from the store but do not know anything about its nutrition value. There are no honey bee farms or beekeeping activities in Singapore, hence no local beekeeping associations where beekeepers share information with the public. I do not know of any efforts to enlist honey manufacturers to promote and talk about the health and taste benefits of honey in Singapore. I have never seen an in-store cooking demonstration using honey or know of honey tasting events. And teachers in the schools here do not really make any attempt to educate and explain to their kids in details how honey is produced. Children grow up innocently thinking that honey simply come from the jars or bottles in the supermarkets or grocery stores.

My fascination with honey goes back many years when I stumbled upon the different types of honey products in the store. The benefits of honey such as Manuka UMF intrigued me a lot and drove me to find out more. As we see a stronger current trend with natural remedies and foods and a revisit of the the ancient times when honey was used as a folk remedy for ailments such as cuts and scraps, laxative, and cough and sore-throat balm, among other things, I believe that the general public here will show more interest in honey, both in the kitchen and outside of the kitchen.

Source: http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-in-singapore.html

R. Tan is the owner of the website benefits-of-honey.com which is a rich honey resource community specially built for all the honey lovers and fans in this world. She has packed this website with a wide range of quality contents on honey based on her knowledge and experience with honey, so as to promote its invaluable benefits which she believes could bring many positive spin-offs in everyone's daily life.

Source: www.isnare.com