Honey, the sugars

Some simple foods can be preservatives in their own right. Honey, salt, sugar, lactic acid, and vinegar are all examples of foods that inhibit microbial action. Some health professionals recommend consuming phytoestrogens from foods such as soybeans to achieve various health benefits. The phytoestrogens in the paraben family, found in blueberries, kill molds and fungi and are often added to food as preservatives. 

The crystallization of turanose was first reported by Pacsu and the writer24 as follows In 1918 one of us (H.) found an abundant supply of the rare melezitose in a certain kind of honeydew honey and from it he prepared a small quantity of sirupy turanose in the hope of crystallizing it. Other samples of turanose sirup were prepared subsequently from this stock of melezitose by other workers in the same laboratory. Recently it was observed by D. H. Brauns that one of these sirups, the exact history of which is not now known, had crystallized after standing many years. By the use of these crystals to nucleate turanose sirups which we have lately prepared from melezitose, it has been possible to obtain a rapid crystallization of the sugar in abundant quantities. To this quotation the writer can now add the information, kindly supplied recently by Mr. C. F. Walton, Jr., that Mr. Walton prepared the other samples of turanose sirup. ... 

Dextrose was doubtless known to the ancients because of its occurrence in granulated honey and evaporated wine musts. Efforts to prepare the sugar as an article of commerce were not made until the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

The present challenge is to determine, quantitatively, most, if not all, of the sugars in honeys, and not merely to determine the content of D-glucose and D-fructose by yet another method. 

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