Honey and Weight: What the Evidence Says

On the best-controlled comparison anyone has run, honey and table sugar came out alike: two weeks each of honey, sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup left body weight unchanged on all three. The most useful thing this page teaches is arithmetic — because honey is a dense syrup, a level teaspoon of it weighs more than a teaspoon of sugar, so honey carries about a fifth less energy per gram and about 30% more per level spoon, and the per-gram and per-spoon comparisons run in opposite directions. Beyond that, two pooled analyses of controlled trials disagree, both weakly — one finding no effect on body weight or BMI, one finding reductions too small and too fragile to survive its own influence analysis — and UK guidance counts honey among the free sugars adults are advised to cut down on. The numbers, in order, below.

Plate I · PaintingRecord

How many calories are in honey?

304 kcal per 100 g on the standard reference analysis (USDA FoodData Central): 82.4 g of carbohydrate, of which 82.1 g is sugars — 40.9 g fructose, 35.8 g glucose, 0.89 g sucrose — with 17.1 g of water, 0.3 g of protein and no fat.

Granulated sugar in the same database is 387 kcal and 99.8 g of sugars per 100 g. Gram for gram, honey carries about a fifth less energy: 3.04 kcal against 3.87. The difference is water, about a sixth of honey by weight. Reference figures, not measurements of any jar.

How many calories in a teaspoon of honey?

About 21 kcal — and here the comparison reverses, which is the single most practical fact on the page.

USDA lists honey by the tablespoon (21 g) and granulated sugar by the teaspoon (4.2 g), so the like-for-like figure takes one step of arithmetic: a teaspoon is a third of a tablespoon, putting a level teaspoon of honey at about 7 g against sugar’s 4.2 g. By volume the database says it outright: a cup holds 339 g of honey but 200 g of sugar — dense syrup against crystals with air between them.

The honey tablespoon, the sugar teaspoon and both cup weights are USDA figures; the rest follow by arithmetic. Per gram, honey is about 21% lower in energy; per level spoon, about 30% higher.

Fig. I · One level teaspoon, twiceDiagram

The same spoon, filled level — the volume is the constant

Honey

Weightabout 7 g

Energy21 kcal

Sugars5.7 g

Granulated sugar

Weight4.2 g

Energy16 kcal

Sugars4.2 g

Honey is the heavier spoonful because it is a dense syrup rather than dry crystals: a cup holds339 g of honey but 200 g of sugar.

Per level spoonHoney the higher figure — about 30% higher

Honey21 kcal

Granulated sugar16 kcal

Per gramHoney the lower figure — about 21% lower

Honey3.04 kcal

Granulated sugar3.87 kcal

Here the comparison reverses: the per-gram and per-spoon comparisons run opposite ways.

Is honey fattening?

In the way any sugar can be — no trial has tested honey specifically against an equal amount of other sugars for weight gain, which is itself worth knowing. The NHS classifies the sugars in honey as free sugars — the category that also holds table sugar and syrups — and states that eating too much sugar can contribute to people having too many calories, which can lead to weight gain.

The limits run from 30 g of free sugars a day for adults and 24 g for ages 7 to 10 down to 10 g at age 1. A 21 g tablespoon of honey carries about 17 g of sugars, more than half the adult figure; the whole 30 g is about five level teaspoons.

Is honey better than sugar for body weight?

Not on the cleanest comparison anyone has run. A randomised crossover trial (Raatz and colleagues, 2015, funded by the USDA Agricultural Research Service) fed 55 adults — 28 glucose-tolerant, 27 glucose-intolerant — 50 g of carbohydrate a day from honey, sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, two weeks each with washouts; in a crossover, each participant takes every sweetener in turn and serves as their own control. Body weight was unchanged by treatment. Glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR and glucose-tolerance measures did not differ by sweetener; triglycerides rose in both groups on all three, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein rose in the glucose-intolerant group.

Two things temper what this trial can say about weight. Its registered primary outcome was the glucose response to an oral glucose-tolerance test — body weight was measured but was not among the registered outcomes at all, and an outcome a trial was not designed or registered to test carries less weight than its primary one. And two weeks at a fixed, matched 50 g of carbohydrate is too short to show a difference in weight trajectory. The blood-sugar half of this trial is on the honey and diabetes page.

Is honey good for weight loss? What the trials measured

Several trials measured it, none was designed around it, and the pooled answers disagree — a disagreement that itself teaches how to read reviews.

The larger synthesis (Ahmed and colleagues, Nutrition Reviews, 2023) pooled 18 controlled trials in 1,105 participants, all at least a week long, with adiposity among the prespecified outcomes: no significant effect on body weight (14 trial comparisons) or BMI (10), and no subgroup differences in any adiposity outcome. That review did find reductions in fasting glucose, total and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and one liver enzyme (ALT, from a single trial) and a rise in HDL, at certainty from very low to high — flagging its own fasting-glucose result for publication bias, an adjustment for which changed the finding’s significance. Its authors go further, arguing the results “do not support the consideration by policymakers…to designate honey as a free sugar” — not the position UK guidance takes, and advanced by a review whose authors declare research support from the National Honey Board (funded by the USDA Honey Checkoff programme). Declared interests do not decide a result, but reading them alongside the conclusion is part of reading the review.

The other pooled analysis (Norouzzadeh and colleagues, 2025; 16 honey trials, no competing interests declared) found small reductions — body weight −0.19 kg (95% CI −0.24 to −0.15) and BMI −0.41 kg/m² — graded low and very low certainty, and its own influence analysis reports both effects losing significance when a single trial is removed. Two syntheses, one null and one fragile: nothing here supports honey as an aid to weight loss, and nothing rules out a trivially small effect either way.

The one small trial pointing the other way: Yaghoobi and colleagues (2008) assigned 55 overweight or obese people unequally — 17 to 70 g of sucrose a day, 38 to 70 g of natural honey — for 30 days, and report “a mild reduction in body weight (1.3%) and body fat (1.1%)” on honey. Its limits sit beside it: 55 people, unbalanced allocation, one month, no blinding described, and percentage changes given without confidence intervals or a significance test for the weight change.

A third measured it secondarily (Al-Tamimi and colleagues, 2020): 37 adults, randomised crossover, 1.2 g per kg of body weight daily of carbohydrate as clover honey or sucrose, four weeks each. Weight rose transiently after a week on honey and did not differ at the endpoint, though self-reported energy and sugar intake fell during the honey period.

None of the trials reviewed here took body weight as its primary outcome; the searches behind this page found no trial that did.

Does honey in warm water, or honey before bed, do anything?

Neither has been put to a controlled test — which is a finding about the literature, not about the honey. Searches of the indexed medical literature for trials of honey and weight loss return studies of cough, wounds and blood lipids; the bedtime-honey trials in the index are trials of nocturnal cough in children and of sleep quality in hospital patients — none of them measured weight or any metabolic outcome.

The nearest thing to a test of honey in water is a single uncontrolled study (Shetty and colleagues, 2016): 50 healthy people drank 300 ml of lemon-honey juice four times a day across four days of fasting, and weight, BMI and fat mass all fell. Four days of fasting will do that; nothing in the design separates the honey from the fast, there was no comparison group, and the measurements were simply before against after. An uncontrolled before-and-after study can show that something changed, never what changed it — which is why no controlled trial means the folklore is unanswered rather than disproved.

Fig. II · Four claims, and what was testedDiagram

Popular weight claims for honey · trials that put the claim itself to the test, counted in the unit named beneath each nought

1. 0none located

   Honey in warm water for weight loss

   No controlled trial of that practice appears in the indexed medical literature. The nearest is a single uncontrolled study — 50 healthy people, 300 ml of lemon-honey juice four times a day across four days of fasting, no comparison group, and the measurements simply before against after.

2. 0none located

   Honey before bed

   Not tested in a controlled trial. The bedtime-honey trials in the index are trials of nocturnal cough in children and of sleep quality in hospital patients — none of them measured weight or any metabolic outcome.

3. 0none with weight as primary outcome

   Honey as an aid to weight loss

   Several trials measured body weight; none was designed around it. None of the trials reviewed here took body weight as its primary outcome, and the searches behind this page found no trial that did.

4. 0none located

   Sweeter, so you use less

   No study here tested that. Every trial fixed the dose in advance — 50 g of carbohydrate a day, 70 g of honey, 1.2 g per kilogram — so the comparison would not turn on how much people chose to use.

What the trials measured — several measured body weight; none was designed around it

Ahmed and colleagues, 2023 — 18 trials, 1,105 participants

No significant effect on body weight (14 comparisons) or BMI (10). Authors declare National Honey Board support.

Norouzzadeh and colleagues, 2025 — 16 honey trials

Body weight −0.19 kg (95% CI −0.24 to −0.15), BMI−0.41 kg/m² — graded low and very low certainty, both losing significance when a single trial is removed.

Raatz and colleagues, 2015 — 55 adults, two weeks each

50 g of carbohydrate a day from honey, sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup: body weight unchanged by treatment — and body weight was not among the trial’s registered outcomes at all.

And on a label, in Great Britain

No health claim for honey is authorised on the Great Britain register, and Retained Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 prohibits outright, for any food, “claims which make reference to the rate or amount of weight loss”.

If honey is sweeter, can you use less?

Possibly — a fact about the kitchen rather than the body. Honey’s sugars are mostly free fructose and glucose rather than sucrose, and cooks commonly report reaching the same sweetness with less. If a smaller quantity sweetens a dish equally, the arithmetic above runs on the smaller quantity — a statement about spoons, nothing more.

No study here tested that. Every trial fixed the dose in advance — 50 g of carbohydrate a day, 70 g of honey, 1.2 g per kilogram — so the comparison would not turn on how much people chose to use.

How does the law treat weight-loss claims on food?

More strictly than almost any other kind of claim, and the honey question dissolves inside the general rule. The Great Britain nutrition and health claims register, maintained by the Department of Health and Social Care, is the authoritative list for England, Scotland and Wales: “Only authorised claims in the Great Britain NHC register may be used in Great Britain”, and no health claim for honey is authorised on it — the register read row by row is on the page about honey and health generally.

The law then adds a second layer that applies to every food equally: retained Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 prohibits outright “claims which make reference to the rate or amount of weight loss” — a rule about the claim itself, whatever evidence sits behind it.

Who should you ask, and who should avoid honey?

Questions about diet, sugar or weight belong with a GP or a registered dietitian, who can consider the whole diet and the whole person.

One rule stands regardless. No honey for babies under 12 months: NHS guidance is that honey occasionally contains bacteria that can produce toxins in a baby’s intestines, leading to infant botulism, a very serious illness — and that it should not be given before a child is one.

Allergic reaction is the other line. A review of the allergic risks of bee products reports that “Allergies to honey are rare, and if they happen, they are often connected to sensitisation to pollen”, and that “Although rare, anaphylaxis can happen after honey consumption”. Anyone who has reacted to honey, pollen or bee products before has a question for a GP or pharmacist first.

So, honey and weight?

Four-fifths sugars; about a fifth less energy per gram than table sugar and about 30% more per level spoon; a head-to-head trial in which honey and sugar left weight equally unchanged; two pooled analyses that disagree weakly — one null, one fragile — with no consistent direction across the individual trials; and folklore no controlled trial has yet tested. The most practical fact on the page is still the spoon.