eating honey pre/post workout
i heard that eating 2 tablespoons of honey pre-workout and 1 tablespoon post-workout had alot of benefits. Do you think there is any validity to this??
From a biochemical standpoint, honey is actually a mixture of sugars and other compounds, classifying it as a nutritive sweetener. Honey primarily delivers carbohydrates and the composition of honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about 31.0%), which makes it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup, which is approximately 48% fructose, 47% glucose, and 5% sucrose.
As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey also contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including a few odd and more commonly known antioxidants such as; chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and pinocembrin.
In my opinion, the antioxidant levels in honey are not worth much metabolically, and as an energy source you would be better off eating an apple or an orange before training to give you a small boost in energy before training.
Post exercise, I prefer eating starchy carbs like sweet potatoes or brown rice, which seem to improve glycogen re synthesis better than other fast acting carbs that are used mainly to spike insulin to supra physiologic levels—which is NOT necessary for glycogen re synthesis. In addition the starchy carbs will cause a rise in insulin enough to prolong the duration of muscle protein synthesis post training.
