Yes, we were shocked, too. “Despite what marketing tells you, regular white sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, honey, maple syrup, fruit purée, fruit juice concentrate, dried fruit, all that stuff—if you see it on a label, it’s the exact same thing. It’s all glucose and fructose,” says Inchauspe.
In fact, she declares that honey may even lead to a bigger glucose spike than table sugar (gasp!). “Everything that glucose spikes do, fructose does it at an even greater extent,” she explains, and “honey has more fructose in it than table sugar; the proportion is higher.”
Again, this doesn’t mean you must stow the honey forever. Just be strategic about the order in which you consume your meal: “Science shows that if you eat the constituents of a meal in a specific order, you can reduce the glucose spike of the meal by 75 percent. So you’re eating the exact same food, but there are much fewer consequences on your body and mental health….The correct order is vegetables, proteins and fats second, and sugars last.” So you can still have your honey—just consume it at the end of your meal!